What Kind of Animal Is the Tapir? Understanding the Characteristics and Habits of This Mammal

There are many legends about the tapir. It is said that the tapir is an animal that feeds on dreams, also known as the dream tapir. So what kind of animal is the tapir really? Is it truly that magical?

1. What kind of animal is the tapir?

The tapir is the most primitive surviving odd-toed ungulate, retaining primitive features such as 4 toes on the front limbs and 3 toes on the hind limbs. It has a pig-like body, a short retractable snout, is good at swimming and diving, and is herbivorous. Only 5 species of the single genus Tapirus remain in the family Tapiridae.

1. The Asian tapir (Indian tapir) is distributed in Southeast Asia from Myanmar and southern Thailand through the Malay Peninsula to the island of Sumatra. It is relatively large and has a black-and-white body, making it easy to identify. The three tapir species of the Americas all have more uniform body coloration and are mostly smaller than the former.

2. The Central American tapir is distributed between Mexico and Colombia. It is relatively large and is the largest surviving terrestrial animal in Latin America.

3. The lowland tapir is distributed across a vast area of South America. Its appearance is close to that of the Central American tapir but slightly smaller, and it is the most widely distributed and most numerous of the surviving tapirs.

4. The mountain tapir is distributed in the northern part of the Andes in South America. It is small in size, with long and slightly curly hair, and is relatively adapted to the cold environment of mountainous areas. Although adult tapirs in Asia and the Americas differ greatly in body coloration, the young are fairly similar, all having mottled markings on their bodies. All are endangered species.

5. The Kabomani tapir is a tapir discovered in Brazil and Colombia in 2013. It is similar to the lowland tapir but much smaller, and its hair color is darker than that of the lowland tapir.

2. Legends

In Chinese and Japanese legends (one theory says it originates from the “Classic of Mountains and Seas”), the “tapir” (the dream-eating kind is also called the “dream tapir”) is a divine beast that eats people's nightmares. The dream tapir is a fantastical creature. In legend, they feed on dreams, devour dreams, and can also make devoured dreams reappear. It is described as setting out from the deep forest on every night when the sky is spread with hazy moonlight, coming to the places where people live and feeding on people's dreams. It will be afraid of waking sleeping people while eating dreams, because it is timid by nature and in the night only makes a soft cry like a lullaby. Thus people, accompanied by such sounds, sleep more and more deeply, and the tapir slowly collects people's dreams one after another into its pouch. After finishing eating people's dreams, the tapir quietly returns to the jungle and continues its mysterious life.

At present, tapirs are very rare. The surviving ones are mainly distributed in Southeast Asia and Latin America. They are extremely scarce, and ordinary people may only be able to see them in zoos.