A Texas zoo’s tapir calf Nadira has passed 40 pounds, double her birth weight

Nadira, a female Malaysian tapir calf at the Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin, Texas, has grown from 20 pounds at birth to just over 40 pounds, doubling her weight in about three weeks. The calf arrived at 2:09 a.m. on Sept. 21, and the zoo announced her on Oct. 13 with news that she is already showing off a big personality.

Her name is Malay for “precious gift,” and the zoo’s keepers describe her as full of spunk. She enjoys splashing in her water trough, she is teething, and for now she can be seen only in holding area number two, a space set apart from the main exhibit, whose pool she has yet to master.

A calf that doubled in three weeks

The numbers come from the zoo’s own announcement, reported by KLTV in Tyler: 20 pounds at birth on Sept. 21 and a little over 40 pounds by mid-October. The report gives no feeding schedule or growth chart, so how quickly she will keep gaining is not yet public, but the keepers’ description of a spunky, teething calf suggests an animal in good form.

Nadira’s mother is Tembikai, who is 10 years old. Her father was Cole, who died in January at age 24. She is the third calf for the pair, according to the zoo, a track record that matters when a species is managed as carefully as this one. The Lufkin Daily News reported in 2021 that Tembikai had just turned 5 and that she and her mate had come to Lufkin from two different institutions, a detail typical of how pairings are arranged across the program.

The Species Survival Plan behind each pairing

Her birth is part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan, a cooperative program that maintains genetically diverse, sustainable populations of threatened and endangered species in accredited zoos. According to the association’s program description, each plan keeps a studbook and a breeding and transfer plan that sets population goals and recommends which animals should be paired and moved between institutions. The association says it runs nearly 300 such programs, each chosen by a Taxon Advisory Group on the basis of documented demand and the potential to sustain a population, and each led by expert advisors who coordinate with a central population management center.

That is how tapirs end up in East Texas. When Ellen Trout Zoo’s first tapir calf, Pertama, was born in July 2021, general curator Celia Falzone, who called the calf the first tapir born in Lufkin and the first for its mother, told the Lufkin Daily News that the zoo works with the Species Survival Plan, which recommended the pairing. “This baby makes 40 in the species survival population,” Falzone said, in the paper’s August 2021 report.

Crissy Garrett, who has worked in the zoo’s tapir section for 14 years, added then that breeding had been a goal from the start, and that several earlier tapir pairs had been unsuccessful before the zoo finally got a pair that was. Tembikai was the mother of that 2021 calf as well, so Nadira’s arrival extends a line the zoo has now raised more than once. The zoo later announced another tapir calf in July 2023, according to KETK.

Why Malayan tapirs need the zoo population

In the wild the animal is in trouble. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the Malayan tapir as endangered, and an older Mongabay report cited its estimate of fewer than 2,500 mature individuals worldwide, a decline of more than 50 percent over 36 years, driven by habitat loss as forests become plantations, plus hunting, snares and road deaths. Those figures date to roughly 2016, so current counts may differ.

Carl Traeholt, a researcher with Copenhagen Zoo, told Mongabay the tapir “was a large mammal that was forgotten, but charismatic and with a colorization that was totally unique.” Zoo births like Nadira’s do not replace wild habitat. Falzone said in 2021 that “there’s great concern over the populations in the wild,” and the managed population is the part of the species that curators can plan for directly.

The same report listed other pressures. Malaysia’s wildlife department, known as Perhilitan, estimated about 1,500 tapirs on the Malay Peninsula and had recorded 63 killed in traffic collisions over a decade. Mohd Zulfadli Zainor, an assistant director at the Sungai Dusun rescue center, said that with their black and white coat, drivers do not realize the tapir is even there.

For visitors, the next milestone is the move to the main exhibit. The zoo says Nadira will leave the holding area once she can safely navigate the pool, a step that depends on her size and coordination rather than a date on the calendar. The article reporting the birth gives no admission or hours information, so anyone planning a trip should check with the zoo directly.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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