Mountain Tapir

Mountain Tapir
ヤマバク
Character Data
Romaji		Yamabaku
Debut		Kemono Friends (2015 Game)
Animal Data
Scientific Name		Tapirus pinchaque
Distribution		South America
Diet		Herbivore
Avg. Lifespan		25 to 30 years
Read More		Mountain tapir
Conservation

Mountain Tapir​

Festival​

Pavilion​

KF3​

Nexon Game​

Gallery

The Mountain Tapir is a type of mammal Friend that appeared in the original Kemono Friends mobile game. Her redesign first appeared in Guidebook 5 and has since appeared in Kemono Friends 3.

Appearance

Her redesign has long, black hair with dark indigo gradients near its ends. Her front bangs curve gently and are cut straight, ultimately resembling the snout of a mountain tapir. There are brown and white markings on her sidebangs. She has a pair of oval tapir ears with white bands along their upper parts, and a short tapir tail. She wears a black blouse with a ribbon on its chest, and a dark grey corset skirt adorned with bows down the middle. She also wears black pantyhose and dark grey high-top sneakers with black bows and white toe caps.

Series Appearances

Appearances In Kemono Friends Media

Media		Role

In Real Life

A mountain tapir. Photo by David Sifry, 2014.

The mountain tapir is a species of tapir native to the cloud forests and páramo in the north Andean Mountains. As they usually inhabit elevations between 2,000 and 4,400 meters, they possess a coat of thick, woolly fur for warmth- a trait considered unique among the tapirs. Their fur is dark brown or black with lighter brown fur on the head and white around the mouth. They can be up to 1.80 meters long and 1 meter high at the shoulders, and weigh up to 250 kilograms.

Mountain tapirs are herbivorous, eating mainly leaves, fruit and ferns. They are a keystone species in northern South America, as they disperse the seeds of the many plants they eat. Thanks to the inefficient digestion systems of the tapirs, plenty of nutrients are still available to these seeds, allowing them to grow rather effectively after they've been deposited by the animal. Tapirs are adept swimmers and prefer to cool down in bodies of water on warm days, meaning they are regularly found near lakes or rivers; as such, they frequently disperse seeds in or near water, which contributes to waterside plant growth- significant for providing food, shelter, riverbank stabilization, and more. Notably, wax palms appear to rely on the tapir exclusively for their dispersal.

The mountain tapir is solitary, shy, and not particularly territorial; while they do mark their own territories, they may overlap their claims with those of other tapirs. They may communicate through whistling. A female goes into estrous every month and the male will try to court her by chasing her and trying to get her attention. A pregnancy lasts for around 13 months, after which only a single baby is typically born. The baby is light brown with white spots and stripes to camouflage them in the dense forest. They lose their baby coat after a year but they will stay in their mothers care for around 18 months.

The mountain tapir is historically hunted for its meat and hide, as well as for use in traditional folk medicine. They're seen as pests by farmers, since they happily eat cultivated produce. Consequent of the expansion of human activities and the habitat loss they entail, as well as poaching and their aforementioned perception as agricultural pests, modern wild mountain tapir populations are rather low and very fractured; many may already have fallen below sustainable levels. There are also few to no established breeding populations in captivity.