Excited campers spot rare mammal rummaging near their tent in Thailand. See the video
Campers at a national park in Thailand were surprised by a rare endangered mammal approaching their tents and rummaging around, officials said. A video shows the exciting visitor.
Tourists spending the night of Dec. 4 at Kaeng Krachan National Park noticed a relatively large animal approaching their campsite around 9 p.m., Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said in a Dec. 5 news release. They shined their flashlights at the shadowy creature and discovered it was a rare Malayan tapir.
A photo shows the tapir’s distinctive black and white coloring. It has a rotund body, stubby tail and drooping trunk-like nose.
Malayan tapirs are solitary, largely nocturnal and exclusively plant-eating mammals, according to wildlife officials. They can reach over 8 feet in length and have few natural predators. Human activities, such as deforestation and illegal hunting, are the main threats to their survival.
Video footage shared by the department’s public relations office on Facebook shows the tapir searching around a sink-like structure, then walking the campsite’s perimeter and approaching the camera.
Tourists who saw the rare tapir were very excited by its presence, officials said.
The head of the national park asked tourists not to approach or feed wildlife and to film quietly from a safe distance.
Kaeng Krachan National Park is in central Thailand, a roughly 120-mile drive southwest from Bangkok and near the border with Myanmar.
Google Translate was used to translate the news release from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation and Facebook post from the department’s public relations office.
This story was originally published December 13, 2024 at 2:29 PM with the headline "Excited campers spot rare mammal rummaging near their tent in Thailand. See the video."
