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Mountain Tapir — printable fact sheet
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Mountain Tapir
Tapirus pinchaque
Tapirus pinchaque is the only tapir that lives outside the tropical lowlands and the only one with a woolly coat, a dense black-brown pelage that insulates it in the Andean paramo and cloud forest of Colombia, Ecuador and a sliver of northern Peru, at 2,000 to 4,500 metres. It i…
Did you know?
- The Mountain Tapir is considered a 'flagship species' for Andean forest conservation due to its ecological importance and endangered status.
- Tapirs are living fossils of a sort — their body plan has changed remarkably little in roughly 20 million years, and Miocene tapirs would be immediately recognisable today. Mountain tapirs are excellent swimmers and climbers despite their bulk, and they will scramble up steep, near-vertical Andean slopes that would defeat a horse. Paramo soils above the mountain tapir's range feed the water supply of millions of Andean city dwellers, and the tapir's grazing and seed dispersal help maintain that vegetation.
What I learned
Draw the mountain tapir
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