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Along with freshwater lounging, tapirs often wallow in mud pits, which helps to keep them cool and free of insects. In the wild, the tapir's diet consists of fruit, berries, and leaves, particularly young, tender vegetation. Tapirs will spend many of their waking hours foraging along well-worn trails, snouts to the ground in search of food.
Rhinocerotidae contains five species of rhinoceroses split into four genera, Tapiridae contains four species of tapir in a single genus, and Equidae contains nine species in a single genus, including horses, donkeys, and zebras. Over 75 extinct Perissodactyla species have been discovered, though due to ongoing research and discoveries the exact ...
Rhinos and tapirs are more closely related to each other than to horses. The separation of horses from other perissodactyls took place according to molecular genetic analysis in the Paleocene some 56 million years ago, while the rhinos and tapirs split off in the lower-middle Eocene, about 47 million years ago.
Tapiroidea is a superfamily of perissodactyls which includes the modern tapirs and their extinct relatives. Taxonomically, they are placed in suborder Ceratomorpha along with the rhino superfamily, Rhinocerotoidea.The first members of Tapiroidea appeared during the Early Eocene, 55 million years ago, and were present in North America and Asia during the Eocene.
Artiodactyls are even-toed ungulates, species whose feet have an even number of digits; the ruminants with two digits are the most numerous, e.g. giraffe, deer, bison, cattle, goat, pigs, and sheep. [2] The feet of perissodactyl mammals have an odd number of toes, e.g. the horse, the rhinoceros, and the tapir. [3]
Brontotheriidae is a family of extinct mammals belonging to the order Perissodactyla, the order that includes horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs.Superficially, they looked rather like rhinos with some developing bony nose horns, and were some of the earliest mammals to have evolved large body sizes of several tonnes.
The round, dark ears have distinctive white edges. Newborn tapirs have a dark brown coat, with small white spots and stripes along the body. The South American tapir can attain a body length of 1.8 to 2.5 m (5 ft 11 in to 8 ft 2 in) with a 5 to 10 cm (2.0 to 3.9 in) short stubby tail and an average weight around 225 kg (496 lb).
Many zoologists and anthropologists have compared the tapir's features to those of a horse or a donkey. "Whenever I saw a tapir," notes zoologist Hans Krieg, "it reminded me of an animal similar to a horse or a donkey. The movements as well as the shape of the animal, especially the high neck with the small brush mane, even the expression on ...