Central America, and in the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Java and Sumatra. This animal is in many respects the most ancient of existing forms referable to the Perissodactyle order. It has four toes on the front-feet, though only three on the hind-feet. The number of teeth is 42—nearly the typical Eutherian number. The Tapirs are always moderately-sized animals, entirely covered with hair, and usually of a brownish-black colour.
Fig. 128.—American Tapir. Tapirus terrestris. × 1⁄10.
The Malayan Tapir is, however, banded broadly with white—a single band; the young of the Tapir is spotted, and striped with white. The nose and upper lip conjoined are produced into a short trunk, precisely comparable with that of the Elephant. As in the Rhinoceros—and in this both contrast with the other existing Perissodactyle genus Equus—the temporal fossa is not separated from the orbit by bone. Of existing Tapirs there are at any rate T. terrestris,[1] T. roulini (the "Tapir Pinchaque" of Cuvier), T. dowi and T. bairdi in America (the last two being sometimes separated into a distinct genus, Elasmognathus, on account of the prolongation of the ossified mesethmoid), and T. indicus in the East. The tapir, probably T. terrestris, is described by Buffon as "a dull and gloomy animal." It is certainly mainly nocturnal in habit. The name terrestris was given by Linnaeus, who placed it in the same genus as Hippo-
- ↑ T. leucogenys and T. ecuadorensis are probably not distinct, the latter being in reality T. terrestris, the former T. roulini.
