Endangered
Baird's tapir
Tapirus bairdii
Baird's tapir is a mammal in the family Tapiridae (order Perissodactyla) — Tapirus bairdii, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The Baird's tapir has a distinctive cream-colored marking on its face, throat, and tips of its ears, with a dark spot on each cheek, behind and below the eye. The rest of its bristly hair is dark brown or grayish brown. Their snout and upper lips project forward to create a fleshy and flexible proboscis.
Baird's tapirs average 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in length, but can range between 1.8 and 2.5 m (5 ft 11 in and 8 ft 2 in), not counting a stubby, vestigial tail of 5–13 cm (2.0–5.1 in), and 73–120 cm (29–47 in) in height. Body mass in adults can range from 150 to 300 kg (330 to 660 lb).
Range and habitat
The Baird's tapir is found in many diverse vegetation types. The animal can be found in wet areas like mangrove forests, marshes, swamp areas, and wet tropical rainforests. It also resides in drier areas like riparian woodlands, deciduous forests, and mountainous cloud forests.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
For the first week of their lives, infant Baird's tapirs are hidden in secluded locations while their mothers forage for food and return periodically to nurse them. The Baird's tapir may be active at all hours, but is active at night.
It forages for leaves and fallen fruit, using well-worn tapir paths that zigzag through the thick undergrowth of the forest.
In crisis
According to the IUCN, the Baird's tapir is endangered. There are many contributing factors in the decline of the species, among them loss of habitat from deforestation, forest fires, and large scale industrial projects. In certain areas, poaching, disease transmission from domesticated animals, pollution of native water bodies, and the developing effects of climate change all threaten this species.
Even though the animal is only hunted by a few humans, any loss of life is a serious blow to the tapir population, especially because their reproductive rate is so slow. The issues of illegal logging in conserved areas also threaten these animals.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Baird's tapir is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Baird's tapir, Wikidata item Q215997. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
