Indah the Malayan Tapir

Origin

Indah was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 26, 2008. As a near two-year-old calf, she came to Prague from the Rare Species Conservation Centre in Sandwich, Kent, chaperoned by her older brother Vasan. It took no time for them to settle into their new home within the Water World exhibit. Their enclosure comes complete with an open-air swimming pool, which the tapirs frequent with great enthusiasm.
European zoological gardens have between them fewer than 40 Malayan tapirs, which means that individual zoos that want to acquire these gorgeous and rare animals have to spend long years on waiting lists. So you can imagine that the arrival of Indah and Vasan in Prague created quite a sensation!

Breeding

Malayan tapirs made their first appearance in Prague back in the 1960s. In those days, visitors could find the popular female Isolda, nicknamed Šosina, in the upper zoo, where the Hippo House stands today. Isolda later moved from the upper to the lower zoo to make her home in the then newly built Pavilion of Big Mammals. Several other tapirs went on to live there in their turn, up to the 1990s. But none of them produced offspring.
The arrival of the tapirs from Sandwich on August 26, 2010 marked a new beginning in our efforts to breed these rare odd-toed ungulates. At first, Indah lived with her brother Vasan, but he was replaced by an unrelated male named Niko on April 19, 2011. Niko was born in the Berlin Tierpark but came to Prague from Nuremberg.

Temperament

At the time of her arrival, Indah appeared to be a well-balanced tapir lady. She was neither too forward, nor too timid. Also, she handled the first couple of days in her new home – and her sallies into the unfamiliar terrain of her enclosure – with equanimity. However, as became clear after Vasan had left, the self-confidence she had shown had been derived from the presence of her brother. But Vasan had to leave, so that an unrelated male could take his place: Prague Zoo wished to start breeding Malayan tapirs. Unfortunately, immediately after Vasan’s departure Indah turned into a timid, jumpy and easily frightened animal. Her self-confidence returned to her only with the arrival of her new mate Niko. This occurrence is all the more interesting because tapirs, with the sole exception of the mating season, live a solitary life and their only contact with others of their kind is through scent marks.

Just like other tapirs, Indah too loves to be scratched. But as this is the largest tapir species and as animals are often rather unpredictable, their keepers usually do not go into their enclosure. So when they scratch their hoofed wards, they do so over a high partition. Indah shows her love of scratching by always arching her back blissfully and pressing her body against the partition to make sure the scratching is as intensive as possible.

Indah’s other great passion is food, and at feeding time Indah does not show any great preference for one sort of food over another, polishing off everything, down to the very last morsel. In a zoo setting, the menu of Southeast Asia’s Malayan tapirs is less varied than that of their South American cousins. If, for instance, they ate too much fruit, they would be at risk for diabetes. Back in the day, the aforementioned Isolda the Tapir would receive a daily portion of cooked rice. She, however, would refuse to eat the rice if it was just ladled out in any old way: her rice had to be properly baked into the form of a crunchy-crusted cake.

Like other tapirs, Indah loves water to distraction. With great relish, she splashes about in the inside and outside swimming pools, and often the only thing showing is the black tip of her proboscis, which she uses like a snorkel. Apropos, witnesses of Isolda the Tapir’s doings reminisce that when she was taking a bath, her caretakers would scrub her down with a brush. Isolda loved to be scratched as much as Indah does now and would vehemently demand it. The strange thing was that when she was being scrubbed with a brush, her coat would produce foam.