Talk:Tapir

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Contents 1 Question 2 Corcovado 3 Book of Mormon reference 4 Korean name 5 diet 6 Cultural References Section 7 "Sexy" pronunciation?

[edit] Question

A tapir is a large, browing animal

Just one question... what is a browing animal? ;) --Dante Alighieri 11:21 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Probably browsing animal — herbivores that eat grass, like cows. This can usually be determined by what kind of teeth the animal has. --69.214.226.102 00:42, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

A browsing animal eats leaves branches off trees and shrubs.. Cows are grazers, deer are browsers. 66.108.117.254 18:32, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Corcovado

I just expanded the Corcovado National Park stub in which I wrote that it is sizeable enough to support a sizeable population of tapirs. I think I remember hearing that this is one of the few remaining areas where such a large population still remains. Is this true? DirkvdM 19:07, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Book of Mormon reference

I moved the following from the article to the discussion page. It does not reflect a neutral POV ("nothing more than apologetic conjecture"), and neither cites nor quotes FARMS articles so that the argument for/against can be weighed. Please quote and cite FARMS articles so this entry can be improved to Wikipedia standard.

The argument has been made by members of FARMS, that tapirs are the animal refered to as "horses" in the Book of Mormon. These individuals argue that a translation error lead to the tapir being misidentified as a horse. This of course is nothing more than apologetic conjecture, with little or no evidence to support the claims that tapirs were used as work animals by ancient Americans. The biologist Jared Diamond has noted that only one large mammal, the llama, was domesticated in the ancient Americas. (See Guns, Germs, and Steel p. 162-167, and "Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication, Nature 418:700-707 [2002].)

--MrWhipple 16:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

How can there be a translation error in the Book of Mormon? Wasn't the whole point that the translation was given directly by God? DJ Clayworth 16:33, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not exactly on-topic, but Mormons do not believe that the Book of Mormon is perfect in a word-for-word sense. The principles it teaches are from God, but the wording is limited by the human authors and the translator. See LDS scripture Doctrine and Covenants 1:24. I still want to see the FARMS articles the article mentions but does not cite. --MrWhipple 16:46, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Here is the farms article

http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?id=129&table=transcripts

Similarly, members of Lehi's family may have applied loanwords to certain animal species that they encountered for the first time in the New World, such as the Mesoamerican tapir. While some species of tapir are rather small, the Mesoamerican variety (tapiris bairdii) can grow to be nearly six and a half feet in length and can weigh more than six hundred pounds. Many zoologists and anthropologists have compared the tapir's features to those of a horse or a donkey. "Whenever I saw a tapir," notes zoologist Hans Krieg, "it reminded me of an animal similar to a horse or a donkey. The movements as well as the shape of the animal, especially the high neck with the small brush mane, even the expression on the face, are much more like a horse's than a pig's [to which some have compared the smaller species]. When watching a tapir on the alert . . . as he picks himself up when recognizing danger, taking off in a gallop, almost nothing remains of the similarity to a pig."8

Thank you for the reference. As I read it, the anonymous FARMS author is not coming to any definite conclusions, but is using the tapir as a possible example of "'loanshift' or 'loan-extension'". He (?) gives examples of other cultures who have done this, and quotes non-Mormon authors who say the tapir has visual and behavior similarities to the horse, so this doesn't appear to be "nothing more than apologetic conjecture."

Also, please note the FARMS article explains that the Book of Mormon never says anyone actually rode a horse, but they do seem to have been used for draft purposes. The stupid Photoshopped image of a "Nephite riding a tapir" has no place in the Wikipedia article.

So, how can the FARMS article be incorporated into a NPOV entry in this Wikipedia entry? --MrWhipple 17:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

My proposed entry:

The Book of Mormon refers to horses being used for draft purposes in a handful of passages. The absence of horses from the pre-Columbian archeological record has caused some Mormons to speculate on which animal to which the text could be referring. A research report from the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies has hypothesized that the tapir may have been the animal referred to, and that it was called a horse by the early Book of Mormon people when they arrived from the Old World:

"[M]embers of Lehi's family may have applied loanwords to certain animal species that they encountered for the first time in the New World, such as the Mesoamerican tapir. While some species of tapir are rather small, the Mesoamerican variety (tapiris bairdii) can grow to be nearly six and a half feet in length and can weigh more than six hundred pounds. Many zoologists and anthropologists have compared the tapir's features to those of a horse or a donkey. 'Whenever I saw a tapir,' notes zoologist Hans Krieg, 'it reminded me of an animal similar to a horse or a donkey. The movements as well as the shape of the animal, especially the high neck with the small brush mane, even the expression on the face, are much more like a horse's than a pig's [to which some have compared the smaller species]. When watching a tapir on the alert...as he picks himself up when recognizing danger, taking off in a gallop, almost nothing remains of the similarity to a pig.'" ("Horses in the Book of Mormon," FARMS Research Report, n/a, n/d. [1])

--MrWhipple 17:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with that.

Done. Thanks for working this out. --MrWhipple 17:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

i dont think a book of mormon reference is needed at all in a page about an animal. 67.187.228.134 02:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I see that this discussion hasn't been updated for quite awhile, so maybe this is a dead issue, but I thought that another point of view might be useful. From my perspective, FARMS's argument is mere apologetics. The tapir/horse connection is far from being accepted by mainstream Mormons. In fact, I would venture to guess that the average Mormon has never even heard of FARMS's proposal.

Furthermore, the proposal itself is fraught with problems. Therefore, I would suggest that if the FARMS reference is used in this article about tapirs, that a counter reference also be included so that those interested enough in the topic can get both sides of the story. An excellent article dealing with the subject of horses in the Book of Mormon is located here: http://zarahemlacitylimits.com/wiki/index.php/Horses, and within this article is a section dealing specifically with FARMS's tapir/horse connection (http://zarahemlacitylimits.com/wiki/index.php/Horses#The_Tapir.2FHorse). KevinM 22:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to clean up this section by adopting an NPOV. The very inclusion of this section on the page is an allusion to the theory of horses/tapirs with a brief description of the theory, and not a defense/critique of apologetics. If that is to be the scope of the entry, then perhaps we should create a seperate Book of Mormon Horses/Tapir Debate page. For what it's worth. Wuapinmon 16:40, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm..This bit of the article is still not so hot. It goes too far into Mormon hypotheses, but without just quoting some Mormons. I thought something like MrWhipple's proposed entry above is more the style I would choose, although his is perhaps a bit long. Hey, is MrWhipple a Mormon? Hm, not important...

-Misha Vargas

216.254.12.114 17:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This is kruft, pure and simple. The historicity of the BOM is an article of faith, and I know of no historian outside of the religion that would argure that Joseph Smith was not the author of the work. If the BOM says tapirs, then there is a reference with tapirs. If it says horses, it references horses. Because there is no original text, just what is alleged to be a translation, there is no room for argument about the subject. You cannot pose a solid argument without a document in the original language. The reference, which I think has a significant POV problem, should be removed from what is otherwise a good article.

--Dwcsite 22:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Korean name

The article states that the Korean name is "niya", but the Korean syllagram given is 맥 which, as far as I'm aware, is "mait", not "niya". Comments? Tomer^talk 11:09, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on mammals or mythology, but all the Korean references to real tapirs that I've read have used maek. (Hangul: 맥, Hanja: 貊.) --KJ 12:46, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems it was due to vandalism. I've put maek back in, and reverted some other edits. --KJ 05:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] diet

do they eat ants as well? Chensiyuan 07:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Not on purpose, at least! They're strictly vegetarian. They do often get mistaken for anteaters, but their long noses are used to grab at vegetation rather than get at insects. - Sasha Kopf 17:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural References Section

I hope I didn't step on anyone's toes, but I took out some of the cultural references listed in the article. There have been enough now it didn't seem feasible to keep adding brief mentions and one-liners alluding to tapirs, so I tried to pare it down to instances where tapirs are featured more prominently. However, if anyone thinks that was a mistake or if I accidentally took out something that really belongs there, please go ahead and fix it with my apologies. - Sasha Kopf 00:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Sexy" pronunciation?

Why is "sexy" used for the pronunciation guide? I didn't change it because I couldn't tell if it's actually correct, but (1) I don't think it is correct and (2) if it is, there has to be a better word.

That was just vandalism. It's been reverted back now. In the future, if you think something like that is incorrect, a good way to verify is to check the history of the page to see if the questionable assertion is a recent change that's a big departure from previous versions. If so, it's likely to be vandalism. - Sasha Kopf 02:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)