New Tapir T-shirts Depict all Four Species

Purchase them in our new Tapir Gallery store!

The four tapir species have been depicted in beautiful, colorful paintings by Sergio Sandoval of Colombia. You can also get the designs on mugs, mouse pads, and on a high-quality poster-style wall calendar. 

We are all about protecting tapirs and their vanishing habitats, and what better way to join the effort than by wearing tapirs to show you care? Most people you meet will ask, "What is that?" so you also get a perfect opportunity to help educate people about these important animals and let people know that tapirs help maintain the health of the rainforests and cloud forests in which they live.

Tapir lovers, these designs will make your day or bring a smile to the face of any tapir fan when you give them as a gift. Each design is purchased separately, but you will probably want to collect all four!

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and The Tapir Preservation Fund

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Wood Carving of a Lowland Tapir

Corpus Christi, Texas ~ December 22, 2012

Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History

From Erika

This collection of beautifully carved animals was relegated to the end of a hallway, as if its placement had been an afterthought. Imagine Erika's surprise when she found this elegant tapir. (Photo taken by cell phone and sent in a text message.)

Please e-mail your photos and text if you would like to see them on this blog.

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Lowland Tapir Art in Manaus

Manaus, Brazil ~ April 23, 2004

This beautifully-drawn picture of a lowland tapir was hanging in the buffet area of the Tropical Manaus hotel. I didn't catch the name of the artist, unfortunately. It's hard to know whether to call it a painting or a drawing - it employs paint, for sure, but the exquisite quality of the line makes it especially appealing. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get a better photo under the circumstances.

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Lion Country Lowland Tapir (with Friends)

Photo by Sheryl Todd

January 13, 2008

This lowland tapir at Lion Country Safari near Miami, Florida, is happy hanging out with several species of larger birds. Tapirs not only tolerate, but usually seem to enjoy the company of other animals, find them entertaining, and have been known to miss them when separated.

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Nose to the Ground

It is always fun to see animals depicted on postage stamps. In this case, a lowland (Brazilian) tapir appears to be nibbling its way across the former British Hondurus, modern day Belize. Unfortunately the stamp designer has chosen the wrong species and placed this South American "mountain cow" in the domain of the Baird's tapir. We are consoled that at least someone has bothered to memoralize a tapir at all. Tapir and Friends Animal Store has an outstanding selection of tapir items. Plastic tapirs and stuffed tapirs are usually Malayan or Asian tapir replicas, but we have knitted tapirs representing each species and unique t-shirt designs as well.

by Lee

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TPF Awards $1,000.00 Grant to Emilio Constantino's Conservation Project in the Colombian Orinoco

Photo copyright Emilio Constantino

The Tapir Preservation Fund (TPF) is pleased to announce the winning project for our July-August 2010 call for proposals. The project, "Saving the Orinoco Tapirs in Eastern Colombia," is part of a larger initiative, "Saving Wildlife in the Colombian Orinoco," targeted to protect habitat and numerous threatened wildlife species in the region designated by the project through education, assessment, and the management of private reserves. TPF's "Heidi Frohring Memorial Fund" award of $1,000.00 will help Emilio work toward these goals.

Please read more about this award and the project on the new blog TPF is helping to maintain as part of our contribution to Emilio's work in the Orinoco of Colombia's eastern plains.

Our special thanks to the W.O. and G.L. Frohring Foundation for making this award possible.

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Bones of a Lowland Tapir's Foot

Copyright Editorial Kapellusz, S.A.

Buenos Aires, 1966

Click to image to enlarge

Lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris)

Left forefoot (left) and rear foot (right)

Thanks to a query about the bones of a tapir's feet, I found an old poster in my archives and photographed part of it. I'll put the rest of the poster online when I get a chance. Note that the feet of the four tapir species may show differences, as may the feet of individual animals.

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Three Photos from France to Help Raise Awareness for World Tapir Day, 2010

Photos by MJP

(Mr and Msse POTEAUX ~ e Mans, FRANCE)

CERZA Zoo Park in Hermival-les-Vaux, Calvados, Normandy

Three wonderful tapir photos arrived by e-mail today with the message that we could use them on the site to help publicize World Tapir Day, 2010.

Please enjoy the photos and follow the link to learn more about World Tapir Day and take part in the activities and fundraising! And, many thanks to you in Le Mans. . . .

The Poteaux family sponsors these lovely tapirs and visits them often.

Merci infiniment des belles photos!

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This baby tapir is way too cute!

http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2009/06/tiny-tapir-born-in-berlin.html

Check out this link on ZooBorns, and click on the video. Get ready for the first few seconds of the video showing the baby tapir CHEWING. I can't describe it, but you'll see for yourself. A visitor in our store today is a big tapir fan and told me about this link. Thanks, Kit!

Have fun, everyone :)

New tapir photo on Flickr

Check out this tapir photo by Joebelle on Flickr.

Surprise photos of Stanley K. Tapir

It was a very special treat today when I opened my e-mail and found four photos of Stanley K. Tapir that I hadn't known existed. They were taken approximately March or April 1969. Barry wrote: "We used to have Sunday morning pancakes at IHOP and bring the left-overs up to your place for Stanley." Well, this is an episode I had completely forgotten. Here is Candace in four photos with Stanley. They brought back memories, for sure. Stanley was about four or five months old here. I'd forgotten that he had such a nice cushy bed inside the house at that age. It wasn't long before the big, strong tapir was completely relegated to a pen outdoors at the back of the house, and I know he didn't like that! In the picture above, the ever-curious tapir was checking out Candy's hair.

Here's Candy enticing Stanley to come outside using the leftover pancakes as bait. Of course, we gave the tapir regular feedings of a diet suggested by San Diego Zoo including alfalfa hay, horse meal (Trophy brand), fresh fruit and vegetables, but he would eat almost anything and had a particular fondness for most things that people eat. It's almost impossible to push a tapir anywhere (see the end of the post), but he could be led with bananas, pancakes, or anything that smelled really good.

Happy tapir. I'd forgotten that he had this much white under this throat. It seems to have faded with age, because I don't see it in his later photos - this one, for instance.

He's looking for the crumbs :) Big, big thanks to Barry and Candace! These pictures really made my day!

In the first paragraph, I mentioned that you can't push a tapir. You can try, but every time I've done it, even when the tapir was half the size that Stanley is here, he would lean back into me. I thought he was just being stubborn, but years later I heard something on a video shown on PBS by "the real horse whisperer," Monty Roberts. (This guy was amazing, by the way, find the video if you can.) He understood horse behavior so well that it was as if the horse heard his thoughts and did what he wanted. He simply knew how the horse would respond to a certain stimulus and behaved in such a way that would most times give him the reaction he wanted. Tapirs are related to horses, and I expect they behave the same way to the stimulus of being pushed or poked. They lean into it. Monty explained that when a horse is attacked by a large cat such as a mountain lion, it pushes toward the attacking claws. If it pulled away, the skin and muscle would rip and damage the horse terribly. By leaning back into the pressure, the horse may have a chance to disengage the claws before it runs or frightens away the cat. I've never seen this, I'm only remembering what I heard in the video. It would be interesting if anyone had further information.

Tapir art and video

I received an e-mail the other day from Elisabeth Nönnig of Hamburg with some nice comments about our tapir blog. She included a link to a drawing (shown above) that she had made recently and gave us permission to use it. Her description on the web page is: "some lowland tapirs in what i probably think a jungle in south america looks like (bamboo?!, trees, grass, vines, mud for tapirs to sleep in). i'm not used to drawing backgrounds, or plants, anyway. ballpoint and pencil. took 2 lectures to finish.)"

About the video, Elisabeth said, "This video is probably the best that i have to offer so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juUVg0-w4f0 ; it's from Duisburg zoo in Germany, but almost a year old and rather short. I live in Hamburg, Germany, and the local zoo has at least 3 lowland tapirs. They are very cute and they even come to the fence so you can pet them. I must remember to bring my camera next time I visit :) I've also been to Artis zoo in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, but the tapirs were inside and there was only a camera showing the mother and the new baby tapir."

Thanks very much for your contributions, Elisabeth!

Jordan visits the Houston Zoo: 35 New photos in our online Lowland Tapir Photo Album

When Jordan Shenhar and his family visited the Houston Zoo in February, they were given the royal tapir treatment. There's Jordan on the left wearing a lowland tapir sweatshirt he bought from our online tapir gift shop. Jordan has been a fan of tapirs for a number of years and a contributor to tapir conservation. I had told him to let me know if he was planning to visit the Houston Zoo, and he remembered. One day I got an e-mail saying that Jordan and his family were indeed planning a visit, so I contacted Kelly Russo (on the right) who is a very active member of the IUCN/SSC Tapir Specialist Group. As the Houston Zoo is also a huge supporter of tapirs and tapir conservation, it all worked out. Jordan got to pet a tapir, we ended up with some amazing photos to share with you, and it looks like the tapirs had a pretty good time, too. The tapir in the photos is "Casaba," an older female lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) and long-time resident of the Houston Zoo.

See all 35 photos in TPF's online Lowland Tapir album! Big thanks to Jordan and his family for these photos and to the Houston Zoo for their permission to use them. Jordan and I will continue to work on the captions, but I wanted to get the pictures online ASAP. The link above goes to the first photo in the series.

A lowland tapir at Yasuni National Park Biological Station, Ecuador

I never know what will show up in my in-box. Yesterday was a treat. Xavier Cornejo, an Ecuadorian botanist currently working in the New York Botanical Garden, sent us some photos of Carla, a lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) who regularly visits the Yasuni Biological Station in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. Xavier was visiting the station in Yasuni Biological Station to study some families of plants for the Flora of Ecuador project, when he met his first tapir, Carla. Yasuni NP is in the rainforest on the border with Peru. Note the long hair of Carla's mane and the strip of long hair on her back. I've seen this one or two times, and I'm still trying to remember where. It may have been on a Baird's tapir. I remember thinking, "So this is what the books were referring to." It's extremely uncommon in the tapirs I've seen. Does anyone have observations on this?

Here's Xavier meeting Carla. Continue down the blog to learn more about the friendly Carla and her relationship with the research station. Carla is about 2 years and 2 months old here, and April 7, 2009, will be the two-year anniversary of her adoption by the station. Carla is free to come and go as she pleases. She enjoys visiting, and you'll hear about that in a minute.

Xavier is just over 5' 8" tall (1.78 meters), to give some idea in relation to the tapir.

Xavier and Carla are waiting outside the dining hall of Yasuni Biological Station. Did anyone say "food"?

This photo of Carla as a baby was sent by Pablo Alvia, who currently works in the Yasuni National Park. The age estimate give is approximately four months, but I wonder because she still has so many stripes. Does anyone remember if there is a photo study of the way juvenile lowland tapirs look at various ages? Carla made her first appearance at the biological station on April 7, 2007. The photo is labelled "Dantito," a little tapir.

Xavier said that Carla (as an adult) is a very quiet and nice animal. It seems that temperament varies extremely from one tapir to the next. I raised two (one lowland male and one Baird's female). I got each one as a striped baby, and the male was a biter from the youngest age, while the female never tried to bite even up to the age of 8 months, at which time she went to live at the San Diego Zoo. I should also mention that tapirs are large animal with strong jaws, and they are also curious. Sometimes they will simply nibble on things to test them, and you don't want that thing to be your fingers! I mentioned tapir temperament to Xavier, and asked a lot of questions. He replied with the following e-mail:

"I'm a biologist specialized in botany. I know something about some wild species of animals from Ecuador, but unfortunately I know nothing about Tapirs. Somebody told me that that Tapir from Yasuni National Park (NE Ecuador, Orellana Prov.) is a female, and is fed with bananas. In one of the photos (with me) she is resting outside the restaurant of the Biological Station, looking throught the window, waiting for somebody to feed her. I was stroking her neck (she likes it), but a couple of minutes after that photo (with me sitting on the ground), she was smelling me and relatively softly bit my leg, that scared me a bit because she is a huge animal. I noticed that she didn't like when I stroked her nose and close to her eyes. That tapir is the pet of the Biological Station of Yasuni National Park, she lives there and freely walks in the night. The first meeting with her was some minutes before while I was pressing the plants I collected during the day. My plants where organized in piles, she suddenly appeared in the darkness smelling them, looking for something to eat."

Oops! In the US we have a joke when you don't do your schoolwork; you tell the teacher that that your dog ate the homework. How would you explain that a tapir ate your botany project?

In addition to the pictures of Carla, Xavier forwarded two photos taken by Pablo Alvia of a lowland tapir skull housed at the Yasuni Biological Station:

Above: Top view of lowland tapir skull by Pablo Alvia, Ecuador.

Side view of lowland tapir skull by Pablo Alvia, Ecuador.

The side view of the skull shows blackened molars. I'd like to ask the experts in the field to what they would attribute this condition of the teeth in the Yasuni National Park region of Ecuador.

Our thanks to Xavier and Pablo for their contributions to this blog. I have also added the photos to our lowland tapir photo album and lowland tapir album of natural history images. Copies of these photos are in the database of the Museum at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Tapir slide shows . . . the possibilities!

Tapirs: Lowland, Art and Craft

Click on image to go to web album

Oh, cool! I just found that I can put a slideshow link of any of my Picasa Web Albums into a blog post or Web page. Let's see how it works! Here's one of the many tapir albums. Click on it at any time and you will go to the web album.

Baird's tapir tapers (candlesticks)

I've uploaded several new images of Baird's tapir art and craft and have captioned the album. You can see them by following the link above. I'm in the process of going through the files on my hard drive, so I hope to have more "soon" on an ongoing basis until I finish! Then I'll get to the paper files and photos on slides. . . .

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I'm continuing to update the web albums. Here are a couple of the new tapirs since the earlier part of this post. You can find the links to all of the ART AND CRAFT tapir web albums below the images. The albums are not completely labelled, but that will come. I'm not trying to leave out any of the people who sent me things to put online!

Lowland tapirs in balata rubber from Guyana

Baby mountain tapir in balsa wood from Ecuador

Album art and craft links:

Lowland Tapir Art and Craft Album
Mountain Tapir Art and Craft Album
Baird's Tapir Art and Craft Album
Malayan Tapir Art and Craft Album
Mixed and Generic Tapir Art and Craft Album

Photo of a tapir at Linton Zoo, UK

Hi Everyone,

Charmain Felts sent this photo of one of the lowland tapirs at Linton Zoo. She wrote:

Sending you a picture I took at Linton Zoo in Cambridgeshire, UK. This is by far the best enclosure I have seen Tapirs in. I highly recommend a visit if you are in the area . . . the Tapirs are called Shannon and Tanya, and have been at Linton zoo since 1990. The zoo's web site is www.lintonzoo.com.

Kind regards,

Charmain from Bedfordshire

One of my all-time favorite pieces of tapir art

I was cleaning up the hard drive and looking for mis-filed things (most likely not mis-filed, but filed with a logic that made sense at one time). Anyway, I came across these photos again and will re-file them with a logic that hopefully will prove longer-lasting! This ceramic lowland tapir, about 9 1/2 inches long and 4 3/4 inches tall, was made by Sergio Sandoval of Colombia. We got about seven of them from him one year and promptly sold them on eBay and our online tapir store. (I saved one for myself.) The detail and charming appearance of this piece makes it extra special to me. The eye is finished in a high gloss, while the rest of the body is matte. I wanted to put these photos online for all to enjoy. I'm still working with Sergio to import more of the items he either makes or purchases from indigenous people in Colombia. It's a fun project for me and brings interesting things into our two stores - the original Tapir and Friends, and the new one.

I had planned to put discontinued tapir items online in a special gallery, but that's been slow going, as other projects take precedence. However, I'll make an effort to get more of them on the blog. We actually do have a tapir Art and Craft Museum in five parts, one for each species and one "generic and unknown." Possibly they should all be linked from one page, but you can get to them all from here.

Unique carved wood tapir from Colombia

UPDATE: There were no bids on our auction, but you can now purchase the tapir online from our new web site. Check out the tapir and other interesting palo de sangre wood carvings from Colombia!

Original post:

Dear Tapir Fans and Friends,

This charming tapir was among the items we recently purchased from Colombia. Hand carved of palo de sangre wood (bloodwood) it is definitely one of a kind. There were two carved tapirs in the current shipment, and the second was of a completely different shape - it also had a broken foot, which is one of the hazards of importing crafts. I have never seen another palo de sangre tapir that looks like this one. Every shipment is checked thoroughly for drugs by US customs when it comes into the country through Miami, but don't get me started on what they do to the objects and how they repack the boxes! Suffice it to say that many of the items are damaged. We are always thrilled when a beautiful piece such as this one comes to us completely unharmed.

THE TAPIR: This lowland tapir was carved by an artisan who lives in the lower elevations of Colombia near the Amazon basin. It measures 6 inches (15 cm) long and stands 2 1/2 inches (6.5 cm) tall. See below for more information on this beautiful red wood.

THE AUCTION: August 15 to August 25, 2008

Submit your highest bid by e-mail or phone (503-325-3179 - Oregon, USA) along with your contact info: Name, location, e-mail address and phone number(s). We do not need payment info at this time. At midnight (Pacific Time, USA), we'll look at all bids. The winner will be the highest bidder, and the price will be $5.00 over the top price of the 2nd highest bidder. Bidding starts at $50.00.

Please be prepared to pay by credit card at the time you win the auction. If we already know you from previous purchases, we may accept a check or money order. If we cannot contact you within 3 days, we will offer the tapir to the next highest bidder. If you know you will be out of contact at the time the auction is over, please let us know and we'll keep the tapir for when you get back.

We'll ship anywhere in the world. Shipping will be $6.00 in the US for Priority mail, and $2.00 over the actual rate charged by the post office in other countries. This usually works out to about $10.00 to $12.00 US. If you want expedited shiping or special services, we can do that at the time of shipping.

THE WOOD:

Palo de sangre is the Spanish name for this rich red wood. The English translation is "bloodwood." It is the heartwood of the trees Brosimum paraense and Brosimum rubescens. The sapwood is yellowish-white. According to Wikipedia, "Palo de sangre has a fine texture and takes a high polish. The wood is very hard and has a tendency to blunt tools. The wood is used in decorative woodworking and woodturning . . . . The Nature Conservancy considers this tree to be "secure within its native range." Other sources give additional names: muirapiranga, satiné rubane, cacique, and cardinalwood (due to its red color). It keeps its color, and does not turn brown with age like some highly colored woods.

Palo de sangre is carved into wonderfully attractive and charming animal figures in Colombia and other regions of tropical America. The bright red color is a natural property of the wood, as is the highly finished shine on the surface (evidenced by the reflected light in the photo). These animals are not varnished, stained, or painted, but come to you in their spectacular natural finish. Fortunately, the artisans who carve them are not restricted by any means or conventions to a particular template, so you get the benefit of each individual's vision and creativity. The wood also varies somewhat from one carving to the next as far as natural color, grain, and markings. The motifs themselves are repeated (crocodiles and manatees are common; tapirs are less common), although availability depends on circumstances.

Donate to help save tapirs ~ Club Tapir projects for May are now online!

Lowland tapirs, Argentina

Asian tapir, Sumatra, Indonesia

Baird's tapir, Mexico

Mountain tapir, Colombia

Above are four photographic hints about the current Club Tapir Projects. One is brand new, three are old favorites. Vote for one, vote for several. Your votes = dollars for tapir conservation! Check them out and place your vote. This month we have all four tapir species represented by projects you can select. One hundred percent of your voting dollars go to the winning project. The Tapir Preservation Fund pays the administration costs, including costs to wire or send money to the winner. This month, our matching funds have run out, so every vote we can get is needed to help fund the project. These are wonderful conservation efforts. Please take a look!

We had some very close voting in April. The winners for March and April will be posted soon. April was so busy here that I never got the Club Tapir page updated. Thanks to your persistence and generosity we had votes and a winner anyway. I'm writing this from my laptop on the road and I must get moving, so . . . updates for those two months will be available soon!