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A South American tapir browsing leaves at Pouso Alegre, Transpantaneira, Poconé, Mato Grosso, Brazil. The South American tapir is an herbivore. Using its mobile nose, it feeds on leaves, buds, shoots, and small branches it tears from trees, fruit, grasses, and aquatic plants. They also feed on the vast majority of seeds found in the rainforest ...
They are the South American tapir, the Malayan tapir, Baird's tapir, and the mountain tapir. In 2013, a group of researchers said they had identified a fifth species of tapir, the kabomani tapir . However, the existence of the kabomani tapir as a distinct species has been widely disputed, and recent genetic evidence further suggests that it ...
Three perissodactyl species (clockwise from left): plains zebra (Equus quagga), Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and South American tapir (Tapirus terrestris) Perissodactyla is an order of placental mammals composed of odd-toed ungulates – hooved animals which bear weight on one or three of their five toes with the other toes either ...
Mexico, Central America and northwestern South America. South American tapir (also called the Brazilian tapir or lowland tapir) Tapirus terrestris (Linnaeus, 1758) Venezuela, Colombia, and the Guianas in the north to Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay in the south, to Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador in the West Mountain tapir (also called the woolly tapir)
Climate change is shifting the suitable range of mountain tapirs further up the Andes Mountains, reducing their available habitat. Hunting of mountain and Baird's tapirs in Central and South America for their meat is common and is made easier by climate change, as population densities are forcibly increased.
Following the interchange with North America, South America's odd-toed ungulates included equids of genus Equus as well as tapirs. Equids died out in both North and South America around the time of the first arrival of humans, while tapirs died out in most of North America but survived in Central and South America.
Asian and American tapirs were believed to have diverged around 20 to 30 million years ago; and tapirs migrated from North America to South America around 3 million years ago, as part of the Great American Interchange. [39] Perissodactyls were the dominant group of large terrestrial browsers right through the Oligocene.
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.