I could hardly believe my eyes this past Saturday; a male black-crested gibbon (Hylobates concolor) swung down from the miniature forest of its enclosure and started to groom the back and sides of a Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus). The tapir stood still while the gibbon picked over its hide for a few minutes, only to leave and do it again (at one point appearing as if it were riding the tapir). I'm sure this was to the tapir's relief to some small extent as it had been rubbing against a branch in the enclosure and appeared quite itchy (that it had some skin problem was definitely evident), and its little stub of a tail flexed and relaxed as the gibbon groomed it.
More like this
Dave Hone (of Archosaur Musings) kindly provided the following photo, taken in Seoul Zoo. It features a South tropical American tapir - but which one? Test your skills...
Purely because it's semi-topical - well, it was jokingly alluded to in the brief tapir article from the other day - here's a little bit of information about the world's biggest ever tapir, Tapirus augustus M
tags: mountain cow, Baird's tapir,
I saw the same behavior from these two when we visited the zoo this summer. I had my video camera, but I don't think I got a clip of it due to a crowded balcony, unfortunately.
Very nice photo!
Tapirs are one of those animals that I always forget just how big they really are between zoo visits. They have a presence.
Interspecies commensal/mutualist grooming relationships are ubiquitous in photic marine ecosystems involving a diverse assemblage of vertebrates and crustaceans (and others?) Terrestrial analogues seem to be far less common...oxpeckers and cattle egrets come to mind.
Why is this? Species density differences? Air vs. water density? Captive primates taking other mammals as "pets" would seem to suggest a latent potential for these type of relationships among that group, as does the human propensity for grooming-based domestication and your gibbon/tapir pair but I'm not aware of anything like this documented in the wild. Has someone worked on this?