Tapirs  

 are the largest native land mammals on the South American continent. They belong to the order of Perissodactyla and are related to horses and rhinoceros. Tapirs are odd-toed hoofed animals, with 4 toes in the front legs and 3 in the hind ones. They have their own family Tapiridae with only 4 species worldwide. One specie is native to Asia (Tapirus andicus) and the other three exist on the American continent, with two of them still found in Ecuador, the larger Amazonian Tapir and the Mountain Tapir . The third one, the Coastal Tapir is now believed to be extinct in Ecuador as the last sighting of this animal was in early 1980's.

Tapirs are plant eaters using their short and flexible snout to pick fruits, leaves and other vegetations. Being fruit eaters, they help to disperse seeds throughout the forest and so are an important part of the ecology. They are good swimmers and like to go into the rivers and lakes, which serve also as a refuge when they fell threatened.
Their best developed sense is smelling while vision is poor and hearing of medium quality. They are solitary animals mating once a year in the rainy season. They are sexually active around 3 years of age. One young (very rarely two) is born after a gestation period of 13 months and it stays with the mother for one year being fed by milk for the first 5 months. They may live to 25 years.

Tapirs are in danger of disappearing because of habitat destruction, like clear cutting of forests, and being hunted for their delicious meat and their thick skin. The Coastal Tapir, which roamed the coastal tropical forests of Ecuador decades ago, is now gone forever because of those reasons and the Mountain tapir is very much in danger in becoming extinct too. Only the Amazonian tapir has healthy population in some regions of the Amazon but is also under pressure. There are now some projects under way into converting this tapir into a domestic animal for meat production and in that way to guarantee its survival.

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Mammal Vocabulary