Possibly tapirs did not live in the country occupied by the Maya peoples.
No undoubted representations of tapirsoccur in the manuscripts here considered.
In Central America Baird's and Dow's tapirs are native, the latter, however, more on the Pacific coast.
The tapirs now live in the tropics of Malaysia and Latin America.
Their present habitat suggests a similar environment may have been favored by the Eocene tapirsof the Fossil Basin.
In the Fossil Basin, tapirs were known from deposits of Lysitean (mid to early Eocene) age of which Heptodon was representative.
The primitive tapirs were represented by Hyrachyus, a medium-sized herbivore which was nearly as closely related to the rhinoceroses as it was to the tapirs.
In America the great enemy of the tapirs is the jaguar, which springs upon them unexpectedly, and generally succeeds in tearing them to the ground.
The American tapirs are sooty brown in color, but that which is found in the Malayan Islands is white on the sides and the hinder parts of the body, while the young animal is spotted and streaked with white all over.
Nor do the teeth of the Tapirs ever reach the complicated pattern of that presented by at least the modern Horses, or indeed of the Palaeotheres.
The Tapirs may be distinguished from the Horse and from the Rhinoceros tribe by a few characters, which are as follows:-- The dentition is generally the full one of forty-four teeth.
The existing Tapirs can be differentiated from the existing Horses with great ease, as the following account of the existing genera will show.
The distribution of existing Tapirs is, as is so often the case, restricted when compared with that of their extinct congeners and allies.
In the skull the orbit is--as it is not in Tapirs and Rhinoceroses--completely encircled by bone.
The Tapirs are always moderately-sized animals, entirely covered with hair, and usually of a brownish-black colour.
Animals, like the tapirs of tropical Asia and America, wandered in the forests and on the banks of the rivers.
The long since extinct primaeval horses, or Anchitheria, formed the transition from the Palaeotheria and tapirs to the Miocene horses, or hipparions, which are closely allied to the genuine living horses.
Comprehending readily the manner of its death, they came back and lay down under the tree, and fell to gnawing lazily at the body of one of the pig-tapirs which the megatherium had torn in two.
Glancing further along the trail to learn the cause of their headlong flight, he saw two black lions in pursuit, probably the same two which had been driving the pig-tapirs a couple of hours earlier.
Beyond the water wherein the pig-tapirs had found refuge, beyond the lurking-place of the wounded megatherium, came three men, running desperately.
He ran back till the flying, plunging herd of the pig-tapirs came into full view around the curve of the trail.
Squealing to split the ears, the pig-tapirs came galloping past the tree, making for a piece of water some furlongs further on, where doubtless they hoped to evade both the lion and the rhinoceros.
He saw the packed herd of the tapirs bearing down upon him; and, forgetting the insignificant creatures who had first roused his anger, he charged forward at full speed to meet this new foe.
American Museum of Natural History)] The tapirs are even more widely separated in habitat than the rhinoceroses, for four species dwell in the New World between Guatemala and southern Brazil and Guiana, while the fifth belongs to Malaysia.
It hunts the largest game of its country, especially tapirs and deer; and wherever domestic animals are reared it becomes a destructive pest.
Indeed, in some parts there seemed a prospect of its becoming still more lively, for their little guide pointed out in soft places the footprints of tapirs and jaguars, which seemed to be quite fresh.
We find ancestral tapirs in Europe and America during the Tertiary period, but the later cold has driven them to the warm swamps of Brazil and Malaysia.
In both North and South America fossil remains of tapirs occur only in caves and deposits of Post-Pliocene age, showing that they are comparatively recent immigrants into that continent.
Pigs and tapirs are banded or spotted when young; an imported young specimen of Tapirus Bairdi was covered with white spots in longitudinal rows, here and there forming short stripes.
During Miocene and Pliocene times tapirs abounded over the whole of Europe and Asia, their remains having been found in the tertiary deposits of France, India, Burmah, and China.
The family of the Tapirs is represented, both in the Old and New Worlds, by species of the genus Lophiodon, some of which were quite diminutive in point of size, whilst others attained the dimensions of a horse.
Amongst the Odd-toed Ungulates, the living family of the Tapirs (Tapirdoe) is represented by the genus Coryphodon of Owen.
The species of Paloeotherium appear to have agreed with the existing Tapirs in possessing a lengthened and flexible nose, which formed a short proboscis or trunk (fig.
The tapirs are an ancient family which has changed but little since it separated from the other perissodactyl stocks in the early Tertiary.
The tapirs too were shy but not so apprehensive of their welfare, for they were powerful animals and well versed in jungle strategy.
Twice tapirs swam the river while we passed, but not near my canoe.
But in unfrequented places tapirs both feed and bathe during the day.
In this region there were extensive papyrus-swamps and big lagoons, back from the river, and often the tapirs fled to these for refuge, throwing off the hounds.
Tapirs gallop well, and their tough hide and wedge shape enable them to go at speed through very dense cover.
Tapirs are hunted with canoes, as they dwell in thick jungle and take to the water when hounds follow them.
Next morning there was to have been a great rodeo or round-up, and we determined to have a hunt first, as there were still several kinds of beasts of the chase, notably tapirs and peccaries, of which the naturalists desired specimens.
Such a visit is particularly fatal to the coca fields; for the tapirs are extremely fond of the leaves of the low-growing coca plant, and they often, in one night, destroy a coca field which has cost a poor Indian the hard labor of a year.
Sometimes a multitude of tapirs sally from the forests into the cultivated fields, to the great alarm of the Indians.
To-night the old tapirs that led the van seemed particularly suspicious and cautious.
Once when, with their rifles in hand, Roland and Dick were watching a small flock of tapirs at a pond of water, which formed the centre of a green oasis in the dark forest, they noticed a balloon-shaped cloud in the south.
Young tapirs form a welcome addition to the larder, and the woods all round abound in game.
The home par excellence of the dreaded 'gator was this dark and sombre sheet of water, for to it almost nightly came the tapirs to quench their thirst and to bathe.
Brawn, and the 'gators on shore and the tapirs in the woods lifted heads to listen, while parrots shrieked and monkeys chattered and scolded among the lordly forest trees.
It was now the heat of the day, however, and the hairy inhabitants of this sylvan wilderness were all sound asleep, jaguars and pumas among the trees, and the tapirs in small herds wherever the jungle was densest.
The animal life of the Isthmus is not abundant, although some deer and a few tapirs are to be found.
There are both sea and river fishing, and some tapirs and other wild animals still are left to attract the efforts of the modern huntsman.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "tapirs" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
