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Tapir   Listen
noun
Tapir  n.  (Zool.) Any one of several species of large odd-toed ungulates belonging to Tapirus, Elasmognathus, and allied genera. They have a long prehensile upper lip, short ears, short and stout legs, a short, thick tail, and short, close hair. They have three toes on the hind feet, and four toes on the fore feet, but the outermost toe is of little use. Note: The best-known species are the Indian tapir (Tapirus Indicus), native of the East Indies and Malacca, which is black with a broad band of white around the middle, and the common American tapir (Tapirus Americanus), which, when adult, is dull brown. Several others species inhabit the Andes and Central America.
Tapir tiger (Zool.), the wallah.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tapir" Quotes from Famous Books



... Palaeozoic time, and again at the end of Mesozoic times, when myriads of forms were cut off, probably from some convulsion of nature or some cosmic catastrophe; and again during the ice age, when the camel, the llama, the horse, the tapir, the mastodon, the elephant, the giant sloth, became extinct in North America—how fared it with our ancestor during these terrible ages? There is no sure trace of him till late Tertiary times, and it is probably not more than two hundred thousand years ago that he assumed the upright attitude ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... yellow jaguars, or pumas, as we call them in the United States, and seven feet from the nose to the end of the tail was not an unusual length. Although, as we learned, they had been taken from the animals only a few weeks previously, they had already been partly destroyed by the gnawing of rats. A tapir, weighing nearly seven hundred and fifty pounds, had been shot the day before and was being cut up for food when we arrived. We were invited to stay and take dinner here, and I had my first opportunity of tasting roast tapir. I found that it resembled roast beef very ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... commonly called tiger, though in reality it approaches nearer to the leopard, are found here, and two of their diminutives, named tiger-cats. The tapir, the lobba and deer afford excellent food, and chiefly frequent the swamps and low ground near the sides of ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... Philadelphia, has detected about thirty remains of species of extinct mammalia. Many of these belonged to animals such as the hippopotamus, rhinoceros, tapir, etc. One extinct animal, called the Oreodon, had grinding teeth like lions, cats, etc., and must have belonged to a race that lived on vegetables and flesh, and yet chewed the cud like a cow. Another ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle



Words linked to "Tapir" :   genus Tapirus, perissodactyl mammal, Tapirus terrestris, Indian tapir, New World tapir, Malayan tapir, odd-toed ungulate, Tapirus indicus



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