Jaguar’s Predation and Human Shield, a Tapir Story
, Yann Hénaut 1, Mauro Sanvicente 2, Nereyda Pablo-RodrÃguez 3 and Sophie Calmé 1,4Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper reads quite well and the organization is good. Nearly all of the following comments relate to text edits, but there are a few comments that need to be addressed.
Page 1, Introduction, line 12 – “should be “Humans...”
Page 2, line 4 – “using human” should be “using a human”
P2, paragraph 3, line 2 and 3 – should be “The jaguar...” and “preying on up to...”
P2,p4,line 1 – “jaguar” should be “jaguars”
P2,p5,line 5 – delete “consumption”
P2,p6,line 1 – “there is a growing number” should be “there has been a growing number”
P2,p6,line 3 – how did you recognize them as 1-7 days old? Perhaps write “...recent ( between 1 and 7 days old, as indicated by red, moist wounds, etc.)....”
P2,p6,line 6 – “uses” should be “using”
P3,p2,line3 – “..result of its well conserved status..” should be “..result of the well-conserved status...”
P3,section 2.2,lines 1 and 2 – should be “We started..”, and “had” instead of “have”, and delete “ever since”.
P3,s2.2,line7 – Add as sentence at the end briefly describing the technique of Perez-Flores et al. 2016.
P3,s2.3,lines 1-3 – after “Panthera leo”, change all the “Panthera” to “P.”
P4,s2.4,end of paragraph – include that range of values; e.g., “...4.77 km (range = x.x-xxx.x km, SD = 30.3 km).”
P5,Results,line2 – change to “..and two were calves..”.
P5,R,line7, - should be “(90%)”, and “In the HS area, 80%...”
P5,R,line8 – delete “respectively” at the end of the line
P5,R,line11 – there is no difference if P = 0.61.
P5,Table 1 – Reduce the font size and close up the spacing so that the table takes up less space in the text and the next paragraph will fit entirely on page 5.
P8,Discussion,lines1,2 – rewrite as “ We show that in tropical forests, humans may be used as a shield by tapirs against jaguars.”
P8,D,p1,line5 – change “with” to “to”
P8,D,p1,lines6,7 – change to “..caused by other big cats on large prey.”
P8,D,p2,line 4 – change to “..of survival; this..”
P9,p5,line1,2 – change to “Despite ben hunted by humans, tapirs prefer to find refuge in areas with human activity rather than fact a jaguar,....”
P9,p6 – not everything in Perez-Flores et al 2020b matches with your findings here, even though it seems that the data used is partially the same. Comment on “..the negative effect that land-use change to agriculture occurring in Calakmul might have on tapir health..”
Author Response
We thank the reviewers for their time and recommendations to improve the manuscript. In addition, we made a revision of the language throughout the text to have an improved version of the manuscript.
Responses to the reviewers
Reviewer comments to author
Reviewer 1
This paper reads quite well and the organization is good. Nearly all of the following comments relate to text edits, but there are a few comments that need to be addressed.
1.-Page 1, Introduction, line 12 – “should be “Humans...”
We corrected the original text and improved the wording.
Originally written:
Human may also be used by some species as a “shield” to avoid predators (Berger 2007).
Modified:
Although they are potential predators, humans may also be used by some species as a “shield” to avoid other predators (Berger 2007).
2.-Page 2, line 4 – “using human” should be “using a human”
We corrected the original text and improved the wording.
Originally written:
While tropical forests support the greatest biodiversity (Brown 2014), and the richest and most complex food webs (Kitching 2004), no cases of species using human shield are reported there.
Modified:
While tropical forests support the greatest biodiversity (Brown 2014), the most complex food webs (Kitching 2004), and many human populations, no cases of species using a human shield have been reported in these ecosystems.
3.-P2, paragraph 3, line 2 and 3 – should be “The jaguar...” and “preying on up to” ç
We corrected the original text
Originally written:
Jaguar is the biggest terrestrial predator in these ecosystems, preying up to 85 species, with a preference for large and medium-sized prey (Hayward et al. 2006, 2016).
Modified:
The jaguar is the biggest terrestrial predator in these ecosystems, preying on up to 85 species, with a preference for large and medium-sized prey (Hayward et al. 2006, 2016).
4.-P2, p4, line 1 – “jaguar” should be “jaguars”
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) is considered the largest natural prey species of jaguar in Mesoamerica (Weckel et al. 2006; Naranjo 2009), but only one record of predation of Baird’s tapir by jaguars is reported in the literature (Pérez-Flores et al. 2020a).
Modified:
Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) is considered the largest natural prey species of jaguars in Mesoamerica (Weckel et al. 2006; Naranjo 2009), but only one record of predation of Baird’s tapir by jaguars is reported in the literature (Pérez-Flores et al. 2020a).
5.-P2, p5, line 5 – delete “consumption”
We corrected the original text and improved the wording.
Originally written:
The only sources of water for wildlife consumption in this region are natural (aguadas) and artificial ponds (jagüeyes), a few permanent or semi-permanent streams, and holes in the limestone (sartenejas).
Modified:
The only sources of water for wildlife in this region are natural and artificial ponds, a few permanent or semi-permanent streams, and holes in the limestone.
6.-P2, p6, line 1 – “there is a growing number” should be “there has been a growing number”
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
In recent years, there is a growing number of low body condition or injured tapirs approaching human settlements in the Calakmul region of Mexico.
Modified:
In recent years, there has been a growing number of low body condition or injured tapirs approaching human settlements in the Calakmul region of Mexico.
7.-P2, p6, line 3 – how did you recognize them as 1-7 days old? Perhaps write “...recent (between 1 and 7 days old, as indicated by red, moist wounds, etc.)....”
We corrected the original text
Originally written:
Most of the lesions present in the injured tapirs were recent (between 1 and 7 days), so we believe they were inflicted once the animals were already in a low body condition.
Modified:
Most of the lesions present in the injured tapirs were recent (between 1 and 7 days old, as indicated by red, moist wounds, etc.), so we believe they were inflicted once the animals were already in a low body condition.
8.-P2, p6, line 6 – “uses” should be “using”
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
To our knowledge, there is no evidence that any tropical forest species uses humans as a shield to reduce the risk of predation.
Modified:
To our knowledge, there is no evidence that any tropical forest species using humans as a shield to reduce the risk of predation.
9.-P3, p2, line3 – “.. result of its well conserved status..” should be “..result of the well-conserved status...”
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
As a result of its well conserved status of its forests, the Calakmul Region is considered key to the conservation of biodiversity in Mesoamerica (Ericson et al. 1999).
Modified:
As a result of the well-conserved status of its forests, the Calakmul Region is considered key to the conservation of biodiversity in Mesoamerica (Ericson et al. 1999).
10.-P3, section 2.2, lines 1 and 2 – should be “We started..”, and “had” instead of “have”, and delete “ever since”.
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
We have started recording sightings of tapirs in 2008, noticing that they have become more common in the communal lands (locally named “ejidos”) of Calakmul ever since.
Modified:
We started recording sightings of tapirs in 2008, noticing that they had become more common in the communal lands of Calakmul.
11.-P3, s2.2, line7 – Add as sentence at the end briefly describing the technique of Perez-Flores et al. 2016.
As reviewer suggested, we add the following sentences:
To determine health status, we scored the body condition using the technique developed by Pérez-Flores et al. (2016) for Baird’s tapir. This technique is based on a visual assessment of the appearance of the fat and muscles of six anatomical regions (head, neck, shoulders, ribs, spine and pelvic bones). A score (1 to 5 points) is assigned to each region, and their sum provides the body condition score (range = 6 to 30 points) of a given in-dividual. After scoring all individuals, we classified them into two groups: healthy tapirs (body score condition ranging from 19 to 30 points) and unhealthy tapirs (body score condition 18 points or less) (see in detail Pérez-Flores et al. 2016, 2020b).
12.-P3, s2.3, lines 1-3 – after “Panthera leo”, change all the “Panthera” to “P.”
We believe that since Panthera leo has not been mentioned previously in the text, it should be mentioned in this section and then only the abbreviation (P.) should be used.
13.-P4, s2.4, end of paragraph – include that range of values; e.g., “...4.77 km (range = x.x-xxx.x km, SD = 30.3 km).”
We include the values: The average distance between the 79 settlements selected was 4.77 km (range = 0.275 to 134.5 km, SD = 30.4 km).
14.-P5, Results, line2 – change to “.. and two were calves..”.
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
Of the 23 tapir sightings recorded by residents near or inside 14 villages of the Municipality of Calakmul, 21 were adults (91.3%) and two calves (8.7%).
Modified:
Of the 23 tapir sightings recorded by residents near or inside 14 villages of the Municipality of Calakmul, 21 were adults (91.3%) and two were calves (8.7%).
15.-P5, R, line7, - should be “(90%)”, and “In the HS area, 80%...”
We corrected the original text and improved the wording.
Originally written:
The HS area has the highest number of sightings (n = 10) and the highest presence of unhealthy tapirs 90%. In the HS area 80% of recorded tapirs were males and 20% were females.
Modified:
The HS areas have the highest number of sightings (n = 10) and the highest proportion of unhealthy tapirs (90%). In the HS areas, 80% of recorded tapirs were males and 20% were females.
16.-P5, R, line8 – delete “respectively” at the end of the line
We corrected the original text and improved the wording.
Originally written:
Areas such as HA and LHA have respectively 62% and 40% of presence of unhealthy tapirs, respectively (Table 1).
Modified:
HA and LHA areas have respectively 62% and 40% of unhealthy tapirs (Table 1).
17.-P5, R, line11 – there is no difference if P = 0.61.
In the manuscript we had an error in writing our results, the correct result was p = 0.0605. We considered this result marginally significant, but due to the recommendations and suggestions of reviewer 2, we performed other statistical analyses that were more congruent with the type of data we have. We later answered reviewer 2’s doubts regarding the statistical analyses. We would appreciate it if you could check the answers to reviewer 2 in questions 5, 6, 7 and 9.
18.-P5, Table 1 – Reduce the font size and close up the spacing so that the table takes up less space in the text and the next paragraph will fit entirely on page 5.
We reduced the font size and spacing so that the table takes up less space.
19.-P8, Discussion, lines1,2 – rewrite as “We show that in tropical forests, humans may be used as a shield by tapirs against jaguars.”
We corrected the original text and improved the wording
Originally written:
In this work, we showed that in tropical forests humans may be used as a shield by large herbivores against large predators, here respectively tapirs and jaguars.
Modified:
We showed that humans may be used as a shield against jaguars by tapirs.
20.-P8, D, p1, line5 – change “with” to “to”
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
We have shown that tapir sightings near human settlements in Calakmul are related with health deterioration, injuries and seasonality.
Modified:
We have shown that tapir sightings near human settlements in Calakmul are related to health deterioration, injuries and seasonality.
21.-P8, D, p1, lines 6, 7 – change to “..caused by other big cats on large prey.”
We corrected the original text and improved the wording
Originally written:
We observed a pattern of injuries inflicted by jaguars on tapirs similar to that caused on big prey by the attacks of big cats suggesting they were inflicted by jaguars
Modified:
We observed a pattern of injuries in tapirs similar to that caused by big cats on large prey, and therefore likely inflicted by jaguars.
22.-P8, D, p2, line 4 – change to “.. of survival; this..”
We corrected the original text and improve rewording.
Originally written:
Tapirs have adopted the strategy of approaching humans or human infrastructure to increase the possibility of survival, this has been previously reported in other ungulates (Ciuti et al. 2012; Leclerc et al. 2014; Lone et al. 2015).
Modified:
Tapirs have adopted the strategy of approaching humans or human infrastructure to increase the possibility of survival, as has been previously reported in other ungulates (Ciuti et al. 2012; Leclerc et al. 2014; Lone et al. 2015).
23.-P9, p5, line1, 2 – change to “Despite ben hunted by humans, tapirs prefer to find refuge in areas with human activity rather than fact a jaguar,....”
We corrected the original text and improve rewording.
Originally written:
Despite being hunted by humans, tapirs prefer to refuge in areas with human activity than to face a jaguar, a similar behaviour have been documented in elks from Banff National Park Canada, which are attracted to areas with high human activities to avoid predation by wolves (Hebblewhite et al. 2005; Hebblewhite and Merrill 2009).
Modified:
Our findings reveal that despite being hunted by humans, tapirs choose to find refuge in areas frequented by humans rather than taking the chance of facing a jaguar. Similar behaviours have been documented in elks from Banff National Park, Canada, which are attracted to areas with high human activities to avoid predation by wolves (Hebblewhite et al. 2005; Hebblewhite and Merrill 2009).
24.-P9, p6 – not everything in Perez-Flores et al 2020b matches with your findings here, even though it seems that the data used is partially the same. Comment on “.. the negative effect that land-use change to agriculture occurring in Calakmul might have on tapir health..”
As reviewer suggested we deleted that sentence.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper describes the fascinating observation that unhealthy tapirs appear to use human settlements as a shield against predation by jaguars. The sample size was understandably low (23 observations), given the rarity of tapirs and the nature of the observations, but the pattern in the data appears to speak for itself and is compelling. However, I have significant concerns about the statistical analyses. Considerable additional detail is needed to be able to evaluate what was done. Following are more specific comments.
1. Page 2: “elks” should be “elk”.
2. Figure 1: The photos need a caption.
3. Section 2.2: How did you do the scoring if the observation was made by local people? Please provide more detail on how this scoring system worked and how you were able to translate a report from someone else into the score. Although a reference is provided for the body condition scoring, provide more information on what it is based on. Perceived body fat? Level of emaciation?
4. Section 2.3: Text refers to “the seven injured tapirs” but this is the first mention that seven were injured. The abstract mentioned 23 observations. Later it becomes clear that 7 of the 23 were injured but please clarify here.
5. Section 2.5: It is not clear how the t-tests were performed. t-tests are used to compare means and it sounds like you simply have a single count of tapirs in each distance interval, not a mean. Also, t-tests are used to compare two means but you have more than two values (3 distance intervals), for which an analysis of variance should be used. Please provide more information on exactly what means were compared and how they were derived.
6. Section 2.5: I'm not familiar with how MDS works but I can tell that more information is required. At a bare minimum, please provide more information on what its purpose is than simply "to explore relationships". Is it looking for a relationship between some dependent variable (e.g., number of injured tapirs observed) and all the other variables listed? As written, it looks like the analysis just compared all these variables to each other. While readers do not need enough information to be able to be an expert in the method, they should at least be able to understand what the purpose of the analysis is and what it is accomplishing.
7. Section 3: What were the degrees of freedom for the t-test. Typically they are given with the t-statistic. More importantly, the p-value given is not statistically significant (<0.05), indicating that in fact there is no difference between HS and LHA.
8. Figure 3: Why do the tapirs in the photos here (and elsewhere) appear to be in captivity? My understanding up to this point is that the observations are of free-ranging, wild tapirs.
9. Table 1: It is my impression that the data given in this table is what the t-tests were based on. Something like a chi-square contingency test or goodness of fit seems more appropriate.
10. Figures 4 and 5: Very nice graphics!
11. Page 8, top: There is not enough information given on the MDS analysis for me to evaluate the strength of the relationships depicted. Some measure of error, effect size, or similar measures would be helpful, as well as a description of what dimensions 1 and 2 represent.
12. Page 9: “fattal” should be “fatal”
13. Page 9: “aggressivity” should be “aggression”
14. Page 9: “decrease as the distance to human settlements increases”. Could this be due to fewer observers far from settlements?
15. Page 9: “more abundant in areas without human presence”. How does the fact that observations are lower far from settlements coincide with the fact that there are more tapirs far from settlement? If there are more tapirs, presumably there should be more sightings.
Author Response
We thank the reviewers for their time and recommendations to improve the manuscript. In addition, we made a revision of the language throughout the text to have an improved version of the manuscript.
Responses to the reviewers
Reviewer 2
This paper describes the fascinating observation that unhealthy tapirs appear to use human settlements as a shield against predation by jaguars. The sample size was understandably low (23 observations), given the rarity of tapirs and the nature of the observations, but the pattern in the data appears to speak for itself and is compelling. However, I have significant concerns about the statistical analyses. Considerable additional detail is needed to be able to evaluate what was done. Following are more specific comments.
- Page 2: “elks” should be “elk”.
We corrected the original text and improve rewording.
Originally written:
All species for which the human shield theory has been invoked live outside tropical forests: elks (Cervus elaphus) and wolves (Canis lupus) in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Canada (Hebblewhite et al. 2005) .....
Modified:
All species for which the human shield theory has been invoked live outside tropical forests: elk (Cervus elaphus) and wolves (Canis lupus) in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Canada (Hebblewhite et al. 2005) ...
- Figure 1: The photos need a caption.
We add the caption to each photo.
Figure 1. Location of the 14 settlements where Baird’s tapirs (Tapirus bairdii) were sighted during 2008 to 2019 in the municipality of Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico. 1) 20 de Noviembre, 2) Alvaro Obregón, 3) Bel-ha, 4) Castilla Brito, 5) Concepción, 6) Constitución, 7) Emiliano Zapata, 8) Nueva Vida, 9) Narciso Mendoza, 10) Nuevo Becal, 11) Once de Mayo, 12) El Refugio, 13) Sacrificio, and 14) Unión 20 de Junio. A) People caring for a tapir injured by a jaguar in the community of Nueva Vida; and B) Tapir resting in a pen in the community of Bel ha.
- Section 2.2: How did you do the scoring if the observation was made by local people? Please provide more detail on how this scoring system worked and how you were able to translate a report from someone else into the score. Although a reference is provided for the body condition scoring, provide more information on what it is based on. Perceived body fat? Level of emaciation?
Most of these cases were attended by the authors and photographic records were taken of each case. Body condition assessment was performed by one of the authors who has extensive experience in this procedure and not by locals. The technique used was following the steps developed by Perez-Flores et al 2016. And as suggested by reviewer 1 we added more information in the material and methods section to make the procedure clearer.
To determine health status, we scored the body condition using the technique developed by Pérez-Flores et al. (2016) for Baird’s tapir. This technique is based on a visual assessment of the appearance of the fat and muscles of six anatomical regions (head, neck, shoulders, ribs, spine and pelvic bones). A score (1 to 5 points) is assigned to each region, and their sum provides the body condition score (range = 6 to 30 points) of a given in-dividual. After scoring all individuals, we classified them into two groups: healthy tapirs (body score condition ranging from 19 to 30 points) and unhealthy tapirs (body score condition 18 points or less) (see in detail Pérez-Flores et al. 2016, 2020b).
- Section 2.3: Text refers to “the seven injured tapirs” but this is the first mention that seven were injured. The abstract mentioned 23 observations. Later it becomes clear that 7 of the 23 were injured but please clarify here.
To clarify this doubt, we add information in the following sections:
We add in the abstract these words (seven of them injured).
We collected georeferenced photographic records of 23 tapirs (seven of them injured) sighted near human settlements (0 to 5 km) in the Calakmul region of Mexico from 2008 to 2019.
We add in the section 2.3 the following words “out of the 23 recorded”.
We repeated the same procedure with the 7 injured tapirs out of the 23 recorded from Calakmul to compare their wounds with those inflicted by big cats on other prey.
- Section 2.5: It is not clear how the t-tests were performed. t-tests are used to compare means and it sounds like you simply have a single count of tapirs in each distance interval, not a mean. Also, t-tests are used to compare two means but you have more than two values (3 distance intervals), for which an analysis of variance should be used. Please provide more information on exactly what means were compared and how they were derived.
See next point (9).
- Section 3: What were the degrees of freedom for the t-test. Typically, they are given with the t-statistic. More importantly, the p-value given is not statistically significant (<0.05), indicating that in fact there is no difference between HS and LHA.
See next point (9).
- Table 1: It is my impression that the data given in this table is what the t-tests were based on. Something like a chi-square contingency test or goodness of fit seems more appropriate.
We appreciate the reviewer's recommendation and insightful comments. Because questions 5, 7 and 9 were related to statistical analysis, specifically the use of the t- tests, we will give the following answer to resolve the three questions. The reviewer suggested in questions 5 and 9 to perform something like a chi-square contingency test or goodness-of-fit test. We follow the reviewer recommendation and perform G-tests.
As suggested by the reviewer we add the following information in the text about G-test.
We used a G-test to test for differences in the number of individuals observed be-tween the area with human activity (settlement: Hs and crops, apiaries, etc: HA) and the forest with low human activity (LHA). The same test was used to determine if the pro-portion of injured individuals differed from random expectation in each category (HS, HA, LHA).
- Section 2.5: I'm not familiar with how MDS works but I can tell that more information is required. At a bare minimum, please provide more information on what its purpose is than simply "to explore relationships". Is it looking for a relationship between some dependent variable (e.g., number of injured tapirs observed) and all the other variables listed? As written, it looks like the analysis just compared all these variables to each other. While readers do not need enough information to be able to be an expert in the method, they should at least be able to understand what the purpose of the analysis is and what it is accomplishing.
The multidimensional scale (MDS) can be considered an alternative to factor analysis. In general, the objective of the analysis is to detect significant underlying dimensions that allow to explain the observed similarities or dissimilarities (distances) between the objects under investigation. In factor analysis, the similarities between objects (e.g., variables) are expressed in a correlation matrix. With MDS, any type of similarity or dissimilarity matrix can be analyzed in addition to correlation matrices.
The different application areas of MDS include data mining, pattern recognition, information theory, psychometrics, ecology and marketing.
As suggested by the reviewer we added the following information in methods about MDS:
A multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis, based on a correlation matrix, was used to explore relationships among health status (healthy and unhealthy), injuries (injured and not injured), seasonality (dry and rainy) and sighting distance (HS, HA and LHA). This analysis allows to show the relative positions among variables, hence their relationships, where shorter distances represent higher correlations. All analyses were performed using Statistica 7.0.
- Figure 3: Why do the tapirs in the photos here (and elsewhere) appear to be in captivity? My understanding up to this point is that the observations are of free-ranging, wild tapirs.
All the tapirs were free-ranging, most of these cases were attended by some of the authors (JPF, SC and MS) and were kept for some time under veterinary observation in the facilities of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. For this reason, in some of the photos you can see that they are in a small enclosure recovering.
- Figures 4 and 5: Very nice graphics!
Thank you very much.
- Page 8, top: There is not enough information given on the MDS analysis for me to evaluate the strength of the relationships depicted. Some measure of error, effect size, or similar measures would be helpful, as well as a description of what dimensions 1 and 2 represent.
We understand the reviewer's concern and have responded by adding more information in the methods section (see precedent response to comment 6). The MDS analysis is based on the correlation matrix and the two-dimensional representation that allow us to see the distance between each variable in the figure, whose distances being shorter are more related.
We also added some references that uses MDS analysis.
María Del Carmen García-Rivas, Salima Machkour-M’Rabet, Gabriela Pérez-Lachaud, Juan J. Schmitter-Soto, Cassiopea Doneys, Nikolas St-Jean, Dorka Cobián & Yann Hénaut (2017) What are the characteristics of lionfish and other fishes that influence their association in diurnal refuges?, Marine Biology Research, 13:8, 899-908, DOI: 10.1080/17451000.2017.1314496
Cassola FM, Henaut Y, Cedeño-Vázquez JR, Méndez-de la Cruz FR, Morales-Vela B (2020) Temperament and sexual behaviour in the Furrowed Wood Turtle Rhinoclemmys areolata. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0244561. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0244561
Hout, M.C., Godwin, H.J., Fitzsimmons, G. et al. Using multidimensional scaling to quantify similarity in visual search and beyond. Atten Percept Psychophys 78, 3–20 (2016). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-015-1010-6
Girdhar K, Gruebele M, Chemla YR (2015) The Behavioral Space of Zebrafish Locomotion and Its Neural Network Analog. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0128668. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0128668
- Page 9: “fattal” should be “fatal”
We corrected the original text and improve rewording.
Originally written:
The docility of those tapirs contrasts with the numerous records of fatal and non-fattal attacks on humans by wild and captive tapirs (Haddad-Junior et al. 2005; Association of Zoo and Aquariums 2013; Castellanos and Gomez 2015).
Modified:
The docility of tapirs wandering within settlements contrasts with the numerous records of attacks on humans by wild and captive tapirs (Haddad-Junior et al. 2005; Association of Zoo and Aquariums 2013; Castellanos and Gomez 2015).
- Page 9: “aggressivity” should be “aggression”
We corrected the original text.
Originally written:
We hypothesize that this lack of aggressivity may be due to a “trade-off” with the immune system.
Modified:
We hypothesize that this lack of aggression may be due to a “trade-off” with the immune system.
- Page 9: “decrease as the distance to human settlements increases”. Could this be due to fewer observers far from settlements?
See next point (15).
- Page 9: “more abundant in areas without human presence”. How does the fact that observations are lower far from settlements coincide with the fact that there are more tapirs far from settlement? If there are more tapirs, presumably there should be more sightings.
Thank you very much for highlighting this point, and yes, the reviewer is correct with this assertion. Answering questions 14 and 15, we had an error in the wording and removed this sentence. It is worth mentioning that our study is focused on comparing the number of healthy and unhealthy animals in the different areas (HS, LHA, HA) and if it can have some influence by the number of observers. However, there are other studies that have used camera traps for wildlife monitoring in the Calakmul region, where they mention that it is difficult to detect healthy and unhealthy tapirs at distances far from human settlements.
Originally written:
Despite being hunted by humans, tapirs prefer to refuge in areas with human activity than to face a jaguar, a similar behaviour have been documented in elks from Banff National Park Canada, which are attracted to areas with high human activities to avoid predation by wolves (Hebblewhite et al. 2005; Hebblewhite and Merrill 2009). Apparently, sightings of tapirs (unhealthy and healthy) decrease as the distance to human settlements increases, this finding coincides with Tobler (2002) and Cove et al (2013) who also found that tapirs were more abundant in areas without human presence. However, records obtained in the HP and HA areas suggest that tapirs in Calakmul use habitats with some degree of human disturbance (e.g., crops, apiaries, roads) (Pérez-Flores et al. 2021).
Modified:
Our findings reveal that despite being hunted by humans, tapirs choose to find refuge in areas frequented by humans rather than taking the chance of facing a jaguar. Similar behaviours have been documented in elks from Banff National Park, Canada, which are attracted to areas with high human activities to avoid predation by wolves (Hebblewhite et al. 2005; Hebblewhite and Merrill 2009). However, the success of the “human shields” may vary according to the negative effects associated with humans (e.g., hunting, poisoning). For tapirs, fearing a jaguar more than a human could be part of the experience and learning in a tapir’s life. Encounters between humans and tapirs are usually without consequences (for both), but are sometimes fatal for tapirs, as hunters shoot them in the head at a close range (JPF personal observation). Solitary tapirs may therefore not learn from human dangerousness, which may also explain why they prefer to take refuge with humans than fac
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
