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u/TapirTrouble 7d ago
It looks like they've grown out their coats -- their fur seems thicker and more luxurious. (Someone who works at a zoo and posts here said that he's noticed lowland tapirs, at any rate, seem to develop winter coats in cold climates.)
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u/TehWereMonkey 7d ago
I actually didn't know that, pretty cool tbqf. I wonder if over generation's they would acclimate better towards colder climates?
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u/LizardLover265 7d ago
Well, the mountain tapir has a thick coat and lives in the mountains, so it's entirely possible! We gotta save the mountain tapirs!! (They are critically endangered)
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u/TapirTrouble 7d ago
That's a fascinating thought -- they're a tropical species now (except for the mountain tapirs, as u/LizardLover265 said). But apparently the original tapirs evolved in northern North America, millions of years ago. There was no ice in the Arctic then, but still they'd have had to deal with long dark winter periods. And there were tapirs living in temperate parts of the continent until fairly recently (Pleistocene). So there are probably still genes that are cold-adapted, even if they don't use them much.
(And genetic studies suggest that mountain tapirs are more closely related to the lowland tapirs than they are to the Baird's tapirs.)
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