Malayan tapir

Malayan tapirs eat plants.

They eat leaves, twigs, fruit and water plants. Their bendy nose grabs the leaves.

Malayan tapirs are browsers. They eat leaves, buds, twigs, bark, fruit, grasses and water plants: more than 122 kinds of plants in all. A tapir walks in a zigzag, nibbling one plant and then moving on to the next.

Its bendy snout plucks leaves from branches and puts them in its mouth. To reach high leaves, a tapir can snap off thin young trees or push over thicker ones. Tapirs also love salt and will walk more than 5 kilometers to find a salt lick.

The species is a selective browser that feeds on more than 122 plant species, including leaves, buds, growing twigs, bark, herbs, shrubs, fruit, club moss, grasses, tubers and aquatic plants (Animal Diversity Web). Rather than feeding in one place, it moves in a zigzag, taking a little from one plant before moving to the next.

The prehensile proboscis plucks leaves and places them in the mouth; saplings under about 3.8 centimeters thick may be snapped and thicker ones pushed or walked down. Tapirs are hindgut fermenters with a simple stomach and an enlarged cecum, eat about 4 to 5 percent of their body weight a day, and travel over 5 kilometers to salt licks. Undigested seeds are dropped far away, so tapirs help spread forest plants.

Malayan tapirs sleep in the day.

At dusk and at night they look for food. They are great swimmers.

Malayan tapirs usually live alone and sleep during the day. They come out in the evening and at night to feed.

They are excellent swimmers. They wallow in mud to cool off and keep biting insects away, and if a tiger or leopard chases them, they run to the nearest water to escape. Tapirs are quiet, but they can whistle and click. Each tapir uses a home area of about 10 to 25 square kilometers, and the areas of different tapirs overlap.

Malayan tapirs are generally solitary and nocturnal, though in undisturbed forest they are active mostly at dawn and dusk (crepuscular) and are more tolerant of one another than once thought (Animal Diversity Web). Home ranges of 10 to 25 square kilometers overlap, and females tend to range more widely than males.

They swim well, can walk along the bottoms of rivers, and are reported to hold their breath for up to 90 seconds. They wallow to cool off and deter biting insects, and flee to water when attacked. Vocalizations are limited to whistles, clicks and hiccup-like sounds, used in fear or pain, as warnings, as appeasement and in courtship.

Malayan tapirs are in danger.

Their forests are being cut down. People are working to keep their forests safe.

The Malayan tapir is Endangered. The IUCN estimated that fewer than 2,500 grown-up tapirs were left, and the number is falling. Forests are cleared for farms, plantations and towns, and new roads cut through tapir homes. Many tapirs are hit by cars or caught in wire traps set for other animals.

Tapirs can feed in logged forest and old plantations, but they need thick, untouched forest nearby to hide in, so protecting forests helps them survive.

The IUCN lists Tapirus indicus as Endangered (Traeholt et al.; assessed 17 November 2014, published 2016, needs updating), with fewer than 2,500 mature individuals and a decreasing trend. Recorded threats include clearing for crops and wood and pulp plantations, housing and development, mining, hunting and trapping, logging, dams and fire.

The Tapir Specialist Group reports that population estimates for Malaysia (2020) rest on a decade of records of road kills, animals caught in illegal wire snares, and fragmented habitat, and that conflicts between tapirs and people have increased. Animal Diversity Web notes that tapirs may be the key seed dispersers for some plant communities.