A Zoo Man's Notebook Lee S. Crandall in collaboration with William Bridges We'd love to tell you to go buy this book, but it is long out of print. It was written in 1966 by the New York Zoological Garden's curator of mammals about his 50 years taking care of animals. No author could be so honest today about the dark side of zookeeping. Crandall started working at the zoo because he loved animals: his affection, and that of his coworkers, shows on every page. However, Crandall frankly discusses the collection of wild animals, the networks through which they are sold, and the problems of disposing of surplus animals. Below is his account of tapirs in captivity, in particular, of how the zoo acquired a rare wooly tapir from a South American village in 1950.

The Tapirs As far as I am able to determine, no mountain, or wolly, tapir had ever been exibited alive until a combination of circumstances produced one for us in late 1950. Indeed, for a long time the very existance of the animal was doubted---so doubted, in fact, that when, in 1929, the late Dr. William T. Hornaday wrote an article in the New York Zoological Society's magazine, "Tapirs, So Far As Known," he made no mention of the mountain, Andean, wolly, hairy, or Roulin's tapir---all names which at one time or another have been applied to the animal. As late as 1950, while we had none of Dr. Hornaday's doubts about the actual existance of the animal, we were not entirely prepared to beleive that we were going to have the good fortune to actually exibit one. Too many times we had been offered rarities that turned out to be something entirely different.

Keeper J. Coder feeds a baby Baird's tapir.

Among the friends who went to the flying field to see him off when he returned to New York was a Swedish explorer resident in Quito and as a more- or- less afterthought Charles told him about a tapir he had been offered---which he was convinced was one of the rare mountain species. Not long afterward, his friend went to the village and by direct negotiation got the price down to a reasonable level. He thereupon asked us by letter if we wanted to buy the animal.

Its name was Panchita, it seemed, and it was a village pet, wandering where it would, and petted by everybody. Still a baby, Panchita was wearing the striped and spotted coat of tapir infancy.

The letter communicating this information gave assurance that this was indeed a mountain tapir, but at that time so little was known about the animal and descriptions of its external characteristics were so confusing that we felt a mistake might have been made in all innocence.

While we hesitated, another letter arrived from Quito, this time enclosing three tiny photographs, each one scarcely larger than a postage stamp. They resolved our indecision; Panchita might not be a mountain tapir, but she was certainly unlike any other tapir we knew about. We ordered her by cable, and Panchita was soon on her way by air.

If there had been any doubts left, they ended when we opened the crate in the elephant house. Her body was clothed with dense, matted hair, blackish brown and actually kinky (we remembered the alternate common name of wolly tapir), and there was a broad white band nearly an inch wide entirely around both lips, as well as a half inch ring of bare whitish skin above the toes all around. There were several other unmistakable diagnostic characteristics, but they were not needed; we were seeing a mountain tapir alive for the first time.

The mountain tapir is certainly the rarest but by no means the most spectacular of the tapirs; that distinction belongs to the Malay or saddle-back tapir that ranges from Sumatra northward through the Malay peninsula to the borders of Burma and Thailand. Like other tapirs it is blackish or blackish- brown in general, but has a blanket of white or grayish white extending over the back from shoulders to hips, rather as if it has fallen over backwards into a tub of whitewash.

All of the other tapirs of the world are from Central and South America---Baird's tapir the largest, the Brazilian tapir next, and the mountain tapir the smallest. The Malay tapir perhaps slightly exceeds the Baird's in size; we have had Malays that weighed as much as 690 pounds, and the San Diego Zoo weighed a female at 750 pounds.

Wherever they are found, tapirs frequent heavy jungle, often swampy or close to streams and lakes, either in tropical lowlands or high in mountainous regions. They swim well and take freely to water when pressed by enemies. Their natural food is low growing forest vegetaion and various fallen fruits. Night is their usual time for roaming in search of food and both in the wild and in captivity they pass much of the day in sleep, although they quickly become alert, even in bright sunshine, if they are disturbed.

Most references to them in the wild describe them as harmless, defenseless, and slow moving, but our experience is that an aroused tapir can be a serious antagonist, able to use its teeth effectively and capable of surprising of surprising speed and agility. Hand-reared specimens usually remain tame and gentle and are often kept as pets around native villages---as our young Panchita was---but they are still subject to occasional moods best descibed as "tantrums", when they are anything but tame and gentle. I recall one Brazilian tapir that was much given to tantrums. His bathing tank in the elephant house was fronted by 1/2 inch plate glass for better visibility, and in one of his frenzies he broke the glass, as well as a replacement sheet we hurriedly set in place. It was not until we subsituted shock-resistant Herculite glass that his charges were foiled.