Southeast Asia is a place of enormous biodiversity, with a wide variety of flora and fauna. In this great range of life there are some of the most peculiar species on the planet and among them is the Malayan tapir. Listed as 'endangered', The population in its natural habitat does not exceed 2.500 specimens.
To achieve the recovery of this threatened mammal, the work carried out by conservation centers such as BIOPARC Fuengirola, which has housed the species since 2003, is essential.
A few weeks ago, the park announced the arrival of Mekong, a new male tapir who has formed a pair with Rawa, the park's female. After a careful period of adaptation to his new facilities and his new partner, The male has demonstrated a positive attitude that has facilitated the entire process in a very satisfactory manner.
The well-being that they have enjoyed since their arrival, the jungle atmosphere of the park and the permanent attention of their caretakers has meant that, just a few weeks after beginning to share the facility, they have had The first copulations took place between this pair of Malayan tapirs. A union that, whether the female becomes pregnant or not, represents a victory in the conservation of a species with such peculiar behaviors and solitary habits as the Malayan tapir.
“In nature it is the male who enters the female's territory. And here we have tried to do the same. Upon reaching a space considered its territory, we have simulated what happens in nature. A task that we continue to respect every day, maintaining an orderly exit to the outdoor facility. Rawa always comes out first and after leaving her in her space for a while, it is time for Mekong,” explains Antonio Garrucho, head of Zoology at BIOPARC Fuengirola.
The introduction was made after seeing that the bond formed between them, through rapprochement, was favorable. Male and female responded positively to their sounds, smells and behaviors, accepting each other. These have been respected by the team, which has studied the negative or positive components of the interactions between the two tapirs. “For example, we have paid attention to their vocalizations, observing about twelve different ones. Among them there have not been any that we have to relate to aggressiveness and that has been very good,” says Garrucho.
The smell and attitude of the female is decisive for successful copulation.
The arrival of the moment of copulation will depend, for the most part, on the behavior displayed by the female Malayan tapir. Males do not have a specific heat period and it is the smell and certain attitudes of the female that are the signals that make the male begin to prepare for copulation. This will only occur if the female is receptive.
“The tapir is a complicated species from a reproductive point of view. There is no courtship ritual as such, but there are patterns very similar to the games thatIn some cases, the male may misunderstand. A well-adjusted couple plays a lot, something that happens daily in this couple, but the female sets her limits. These games will intensify as the female approaches her days of heat,” highlights Garrucho.
At these times, the park team pays attention to the behavior and return of heat of the female to detect if these first copulations have finally been successful. If there is pregnancy, the female will not go into heat again until after her calf is born.
Bioparc Fuengirola: one of the 23 zoos that works on the conservation of the Malayan tapir within the EAZA
The animal park has been home to Malayan tapirs since 2003. You could say that the species is a living fossil, a strange mammal weighing about three hundred kilos that It practically remains the same as its ancestors from more than 55 million years ago and whose closest relatives are the horse and the rhinoceros.
It is an endangered species. Their population in the wild has halved in the last thirty years. Today there are only a few left more than two thousand specimens, 44 of them in zoos who work in the EAZA conservation program. A total of 20 European centers participate in this conservation program, including Bioparc Fuengirola; unique in Spain within the program of this species.
The forecasts for the Malayan tapir are not good. If the trend continues to decline, this species could disappear in the next twenty years.
In its mission to conserve and preserve threatened species and coordinated with EAZA, BIOPARC Fuengirola has managed to fulfill its mission of reproducing species in practically all the programs in which it has participated. This achieves the objective of maintaining, among all participating animal parks at European and global level, a group of each species large enough and genetically diversified to guarantee its future.
BIOPARC Fuengirola continues working on the reproduction of this scarce species, with the hope of being able to contribute to increasing its effective numbers in the near future. The babies show a beautiful speckled coat that helps them go unnoticed among the vegetation of their original habitat in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand, until they are one year old. If we finally manage to get this new pair to reproduce, it will be the first time it has happened in Spain.
