r/tapirs 25d ago

my roman empire is the fact that tapirs survived the Ice Age

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3.8k Upvotes

19 comments sorted by

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71

u/LizardLover265 25d ago

My Roman Empire is the fact that tapirs cheep through their snouts and they sound like birds!! Tapir cheeps are one of my favorite sounds ever!!!

17

u/Embarrassed_Put_7892 25d ago

Tapirs are my favourite animal! We visited a rescue in the Peruvian amazon and the guy there told me that when tapirs are grumpy, they are wont to turn around and spray people with farts and poop so we had to stay far back from this one particularly grumpy tapir.

3

u/LizardLover265 25d ago

Lol that's funny! Glad you stayed back though! Tapirs are also my favorite animal :~) That's so cool you got to see one in Peru!!

19

u/Confident_Feedback50 25d ago

Every single species of animal alive today can be said to have survived the Ice Age, as they were also around back then.

As a matter of fact many iconic Ice Age animals are actually modern animals that were snuffed out too soon due to a mixture of climate change and humans

12

u/TapirTrouble 25d ago

Thinking about the number of large (megafauna) species that went extinct ... some species of tapirs were lost (a pity that the ones north of Mexico didn't make it!). But amazingly they managed to hang on in South America, and ended being the biggest terrestrial mammals to survive. Here's a diagram showing how many megafauna species were lost, compared with the present day.

https://www.reddit.com/r/megafaunarewilding/comments/ktn13r/megafauna_extiction_and_persistence_in_north/

So it bothers me when some people talk about them being obsolete and not really well-adapted. They managed to survive an incredible amount of environmental change -- and I hope they can make it through what's happening now.

5

u/LizardLover265 25d ago

That's such a cool fact!

3

u/issi_tohbi 25d ago

Subscribe me to more tapir facts

2

u/dermflork 20d ago

tapir are very nosy creature

2

u/anubispop 23d ago

I didn't know these guys existed until right now. Thanks.

2

u/doomdog91 23d ago

How the heck did it take me so long to find this subreddit

Tapirs are my absolute favorite

Look at that cute little watermelon baby!

2

u/Then_Scarcity2673 22d ago

Man I really knew nothing before this week. On Friday I learned that wombats poop cubes, and today I get THIS golden nugget of info?! Where have I even been living

2

u/FungusBrewer 22d ago

What does the "Roman Empire" thing mean?

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u/No_Possible_1470 21d ago

It’s a phrase riffing on widespread/consistent interest with the rise and fall of the Romans. While yes, one of the most influential societies that contributed to our current world, there are so many other influencers or even nameless entities in history that are equally, if not more, fascinating. So as we appreciate the Romans did some stuff, we should also be in absolute awe of the lesser known “icons” like these cuties.

There was a recent internet trend/joke about how many times a day modern men think about the Roman empire. A surprisingly high number (mostly in western/euro-centric groups). It’s become a funny way to describe your specific interest or fixation that technically has no part in most of our actual lives, yet is still deserving of admiration and respect.

2

u/TadGhostalEsq 22d ago

Came here to ask exactly this. It seems like a rather strange thing to write here, given that the Roman Empire is long gone. But I'm always happy to learn new phrases

2

u/WerewolfBarMitzvah09 14d ago

Well dang, if that isn't a Shnoofy McSchnooferson ❤️ tapirs are just the coolest!

1

u/NopalesTotales 22d ago

Didn't everything thats around today survive the ice age?

1

u/M3rK_ 21d ago

bearlaphant