Why are tapirs not zoo superstar species?

I am so surprised that people all over the world think tapirs are ant-eaters...... During my childhood, when there isn't any anteater being exhibited in China's zoos, people had already began to point to the Malayan tapirs in the zoo and said "ant-eater!"

 

I think it depends on the zoo to some degree. In a large abc zoo many animals might be sidelined by visitors who focus on the big headliners like elephants, chimpanzees, lions and tigers.

But in smaller zoos, it seems to me that more species have the opportunity to be in the spotlight. I have only been to Linton Zoo once. When I went the tapirs were very active. They have quite a large enclosure in a prominent position and lots of people were gathered to watch them. They were curious and stayed for quite some time. I overheard some regular visitors talking about them knowledgeably with affection and I found the whole thing an interesting experience as I am fascinated by how visitors respond to animals.

 

I agree with the most people saying some zoos most times neglect the "not headliner" animals, just as the tapir. In many cases, the zoos have good education programs and most times good information signs around the exhibits and so on but many times, the parents just make not a good education relating to the world of animals. And this is reflected in many cases the people already told in this topic. It's funny sometimes, that's for sure, but often I'm standing in front of an exhibit with a "not headliner animal" and a family beside me is discussing what animal they see there. One time, at the aardvark exhibit, the little child (maybe 8 or 9 years old) called "oh look there an aardvark", then the mother said "oh no, that's an anteater" and finally the father said "you're wrong, it's a meerkat" ! Already the "anteater" was sad, but meerkat? ! At that time I thought "how can a, maybe 40 years old, man think the aardvark is a meerkat" ? It's a big problem, especially in big cities even if they have a zoo, that too many people are ignoramuses in every department of any form of nature. There was a few years ago this survey in a big german city where a lot of kids were supposed to paint a normal cow. More than 50%(!) actually did paint the cow purple (They thought cows look like the cow of the chocolate company "Milka"). The world needs a refurbishment in animal education and fortunately the zoos are working on it.

 

For me, they always were. As I child, I refused to leave a zoo without seeing a tapir or a pygmy hippopotamus.

 

I love tapirs, but I think their similarities to the more popular elephants and hippos hurt them more than help.

 

Because not many zoos have them.

Not many zoos have tapirs and many have already phased them out. I enjoyed watching Cleveland's Malayans before they phased them out for African Elephant Crap . In Nov 2013, I saw tapirs at the Bronx Zoo's JungleWorld, 7 hours from Cleveland. I really enjoyed seeing tapirs. Even Columbus Zoo doesn't have them. They have everything but chimpanzees, seals, lemurs, insects, hippos, and of course, tapirs. Such a shame that a tapir lover has to go to the Bronx.

 

I just wish people would learn to read signs/panels. Am I like, the only person in the world who automatically reads everything she sees? Does everyone else have to put effort into it? If nothing else, knowing to read signs is a life skill that could prevent you from being killed. But this might be getting off-topic.

Anyway, it's largely lack of publicity. As mentioned, tapirs haven't really been prominently featured in culture or popular media. Plus, lots of people who go to zoos mostly go for the popular animals, and then wander around to look at the others without bothering to learn anything about them. They look for the "stock" zoo animals (lions, tigers, elephants, etc.) and maybe stuff they've seen on the internet. I'm hoping the internet's obsession with fun facts and trivia and weird animals will get people more interested in a bigger variety of creatures.

 

In London Zoo last year a woman walked into the Okapi house,pointed at the baby Okapi and said to her son 'Look at the monkey!'

Tapirs will never get more general love because they sleep far too much to carry any charisma over to the general zoo public. Watched the Chester Zoo pair of Malaysians forage for nearly an hour late on Saturday.

 

Is this true? They seem fairly common in European zoos, unsurprisingly rare in Australasian zoos, but I didn't think they were particularly unusual in American zoos - surely there are robust, sustainable populations of Malayan and Brazilian tapirs at least?

 

Often (in my experience at least) if people do know what a tapir is they think a tapir is black and white like a Malayan tapir and dont think of them being brown like the other species of tapir. I couldn't imagine Malayan tapirs are confused with anteaters but brazillian or bairds would be because they are just big and a boring brown colour compared to the more unusually patterned malayans.

 

I have just noticed that if you type brazilian tapir into google one of the related searches that it suggests is giant anteater!
sad really.