Why are tapirs not zoo superstar species?

DavidBrown

DavidBrown

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Hi. This is another query for my quest to understand why some species are zoo superstars and others with potential star quality are not.

There has been some discussion in an LA Zoo thread about why the mountain tapirs, are being phased out of US zoos.

This lead me to wonder why tapirs are not more popular as zoo animals and exhibit headliners. It seems like they are charismatically weird with their large size, prehensile snouts, colorful pelage pattern (Malayan tapir), and watermelon patterned babies. Admittedly they don't actually do very much most of the time I see them in zoos, although sometimes I see Malayan tapirs swimming.

Do people find them boring?

Maybe tapirs are popular species to some degree, but more like otters than say, gorillas or tigers in that they are "supporting actors" rather than stars? It seems like many of the rainforest exhibits have tapirs as prominent residents.

If anybody has opinions on why tapirs aren't more popular (or why they are and it is overlooked) I would be interested to hear them.
 
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I'm afraid that tapirs haven't achieved ABC status and are unlikely to replace "T is for tiger". I must admit that I liked seeing the mountain and Baird's tapirs at Los Angeles Zoo, but I don't think there were many other people around the enclosures. I have met a few people who are fond of tapirs, but several people are confused as to what tapirs are. A magazine article included a survey asking people which animal they were looking at. Many people didn't know the animal was a Malayan tapir. Several people thought it was an anteaters and the colour pattern made some people think it was a giant panda. Even if the people had liked seeing a tapir, if they thought it was a totally different species it is unlikely that they would find out more information about tapirs.

Many years ago, London Zoo had a small nocturnal house in the Childrens' Zoo. The first exhibit had a couple of aardvarks, but the first information panel said 'Senegal bushbabies'. One customer said, "They're bushbabies. They leap from tree to tree." If people can't distinguish aardvarks from bushbabies, perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on people who can't identify tapirs.

A few years ago, a young boy came to the Giraffe House at London Zoo. "I bet you can't guess my favourite animals... I like tapirs." I was most impressed by a later sentence. "I know about prehistoric platypuses." I mentioned a few generic names and then said "Ob.." The boy said, "Obdurodon". So I hope there's a potential zoologist in the making.
 
Two reasons; They are not very well known. There is not an animated "Tommy the Tapir" anywhere in pop culture. Second, they don't do much. Most of my zoo experience with tapirs involves looking at them while they lay around. Not very engaging.
 
Ituri said:
Two reasons; They are not very well known. There is not an animated "Tommy the Tapir" anywhere in pop culture. Second, they don't do much. Most of my zoo experience with tapirs involves looking at them while they lay around. Not very engaging.
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Apparently there is a Tommy the Tapir, but you are right that he has not yet gotten his big break in show business: Julie Zickefoose on Blogspot: Tommy the Tapir
 
Small child at Chester Zoo
"Mum what's that?"
Mum's standing next to the tapir sign and looks at it, then ...

"I don't know, it's a ... thing!"
 
Ituri said:
Two reasons; They are not very well known. There is not an animated "Tommy the Tapir" anywhere in pop culture. Second, they don't do much. Most of my zoo experience with tapirs involves looking at them while they lay around. Not very engaging.
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Ituri is right to say they dont do much, but then neither do some of the big cats, so it is obviously a visual thing. Big cats look like, well, big cats, but Tapirs look like nothing else. Visitors therefore have no visual cues with which to pigeonhole Tapirs, and as a result asume they are "weird". A German(?) researcher spent some time observing visitors in several zoos when they were at the Tapir enclosures, and recorded the names Tapirs were called. The names ranged from Giant Pandas through to Woodlice!!!!! Maybe we should be more aware of the visitors lack of Tapir knowledge and start generating more publicity of them whenever a birth occurs, or when a new one arrives at our zoo. We have the power to increase the public perception of these often mis-understood mammals through so many different ways (press, t.v., public talks, publications etc), so maybe the fault lies with us, the zoo community as a whole? Just a thought.
 
If that's the size of the woodlice in those people's gardens, remind me never to visit them! :cool:
 
Now wouldn't that be something - an enclosure of rediscovered Arthropleura.

And yes, I know Arthropleura was a myriapod, not a crustacean, but it would have looked damn like a giant woodlouse! And having seen their footprints on the Isle of Arran, they certainly would have been impressive to look at ;)
 
Hello MonkeyMike

Stefan Seitz's paper is available at Tapir. It seems that some people thought that tapirs were bats or penguins. As far as I'm concerned, tapirs are very distinctive, but it seems that other people have problems identifying them.
 
Well, there's still the thing about them not being publicly known because no fictional animal characters are tapirs. And they are not portrayed by the media like typical zoo animals either. Maybe you could find a cartoon with a tapir as a minor character if you look long enough, but I doubt you could find any fictional portrayal of people going to a zoo which keeps tapirs.
So due to that, they're ruled out from the exclusive list of lions, tigers, monkeys, apes, elephants, giraffes, bears, wolves, rhinos, hippos, domestic mammals, flamingos, parrots, crocodiles and enormous anacondas and pythons. Those animals will attract tons of spectators no matter what they do (eating, sleeping, walking around in circles, mating etc.) due to the fact that they are the classics and very iconic. If any more unknown animal should hope to keep up with those, it has to be very active, social and funny to watch like meerkats, dwarf otters or lemurs.
Tapirs are solitary by nature so they won't have any funny interactions with each other. They are also generally calm and walks slowly around eating or just lies down resting = boring in the eyes of the public.

Just read that report of tapir comparisons and found it quite hilarious. Though I may have wonder: Is he sure he didn't hear comparisons like woodlice, sea horses and platypi out of context? If I heard someone refer to a tapir as a woodlouse, I would definitely believe they were talking about a woodlouse crawling at the fence or something. And I'm quite surprised that people know what hyraxes, peccaries and ibexes are, but cannot recognize a tapir.
The tapir/anteater mistake is oh so common, though. When I actually meet a person who knows what a tapir is, they'll often start making sure by asking: "It's the big animal that looks like an anteater, right?"
 
I remember in the late 80's/90s, Toronto's Malayan Tapirs used to be really popular when they were in where the Babirusa and White Handed Gibbons were, and I still see a fair amount of curious visitors checking in on them. Maybe their popularity varies from zoo to soo?
 
Meaghan Edwards said:
I remember in the late 80's/90s, Toronto's Malayan Tapirs used to be really popular when they were in where the Babirusa and White Handed Gibbons were, and I still see a fair amount of curious visitors checking in on them. Maybe their popularity varies from zoo to soo?
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I think with an animal like tapirs it requires really good/interesting exhibtry to make them a "superstar" although I think they do have the potential if the zoo highlights them enough. Animals like tigers, lions, bears and elephants etc. are interesting enough in themselves but tapirs need a bit more publicity. For example in Wuppertal Zoo where you can see the tapirs underwater at announced "bath times".

Also in Denmark they are actually featured as the mascot of one of the biggest paper companies. The Danish word for paper is "papir" so it is called "Tapir Papir".

When my girlfriend first saw a picture of a tapir and tried to describe it to me she called it "some sort of hippo with a snout".
 
Toddy said:
I think with an animal like tapirs it requires really good/interesting exhibtry to make them a "superstar" although I think they do have the potential if the zoo highlights them enough. Animals like tigers, lions, bears and elephants etc. are interesting enough in themselves but tapirs need a bit more publicity. For example in Wuppertal Zoo where you can see the tapirs underwater at announced "bath times".

Also in Denmark they are actually featured as the mascot of one of the biggest paper companies. The Danish word for paper is "papir" so it is called "Tapir Papir".

When my girlfriend first saw a picture of a tapir and tried to describe it to me she called it "some sort of hippo with a snout".
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That is cool that a paper company is using a tapir as its mascot. Hopefully the company is making contributions to tapir conservation?

Good point also about how tapirs can perhaps be made more interesting with innovative exhibitry. The idea of underwater tapir viewing is cool.
 
It would be interesting to investigate if different species of tapir recieve different levels of attention from the public. From my limited observations at Chester and Edinburgh, I suspect the Malayans at the latter are a lot more popular than the Brazilians at the former. Haven't the foggiest why, though.
 
Hvedekorn said:
Though I may have wonder: Is he sure he didn't hear comparisons like woodlice, sea horses and platypi out of context? If I heard someone refer to a tapir as a woodlouse, I would definitely believe they were talking about a woodlouse crawling at the fence or something.
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the paper specifically notes in the table at the bottom that woodlouse was a comparitive identification (the tapir being "like" a woodlouse in some way)
 
:D
Chlidonias said:
the paper specifically notes in the table at the bottom that woodlouse was a comparitive identification (the tapir being "like" a woodlouse in some way)
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Now that makes more sense. Thanks for that Chlidonias. I hadn't actually read the paper myself, just quickly scanned through it and those comparisons caught my eye. Hopefully it raised a laugh or two, and just goes to show that the publics perception of zoo animals is certainly interesting at best, and downright bizarre occasionally.
 
I happened across this thread again, and it reminded me of the tapir sign I saw at the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok.

 
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