tapir behavior- an examination of activity patterns, mother young ...

Tapirs are infrequently hunted due to various cultural taboos and myths, although
in some areas they are hunted for food. Hunting also occurs when tapirs eat crops or the
bark off plantation trees (Holden et al., 2003). The major threat to the Malay tapir is not
hunting but habitat loss and fragmentation. The forests they inhabit are being cleared for
rubber and palm oil plantations, cropland, and cities (Anon., 1999). The Malay tapir is
currently listed on the IUCN red list as vulnerable and the Sumatran population is listed
as endangered (Kawanishi et al., 2003).
Folklore
The Siamese name for the tapir was “P’som-sett” which means a mixture of
things. Folklore stated that tapirs were created last out of the parts leftover from all the
other animals (Morris, 2005; Sandborn and Watkins, 1950). In Malaysia, Chinese
immigrants called the tapir a strange “Si-bu-xiang” (their name for Père David’s deer)
because it had the face of a horse, hooves of a rhino, nose of an elephant, and nostrils of a
pig. “Si-bu-xiang” translates as four images and nothing is like it (Kawanishi et al.,
2002).
Population Dynamics
Densities of the Malay tapir range from 0.30-0.44 ind/km 2 in high quality
undisturbed swamp forest and lowland forests respectively, to as low as 0.035ind/km 2
(Medici et al., 2003). One male had a home range of 12.75km 2 and a female had a home
range of 25km 2 , traveling over 4km in a single day (Traeholt, 2004; Williams, 1978). It is
thought that females may have larger ranges than males (Williams, 1991). Tapirs show
intraspecific tolerance and have overlapping home ranges (Williams, 1978).
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