This baby tapir is so cute we might not get anything else done today

Well, this week’s cuteness was going to be about the Puppy Bowl coinciding with the recent Superb Owl, but then Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium (PDZA) blew those plans out of the water with a fuzzy adorable newborn baby tapir. Frankly, Cuteness HQ just was not prepared. Get ready for some head-exploding levels of cute — and make sure you watch the video with the sound on — as we celebrate this milestone birth for PDZA.

The baby tapir (name to be announced) was born Sunday, February 2, to mom Yuna at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. Currently, this special little one resembles a fuzzy collision between a watermelon and some newsprint — they’re covered in a distinctive black and white stripe pattern — and will grow from a wee 20 pounds to somewhere between its parents’ 800-900 pounds. But it’s not just their adorable markings and tiny chirps that make them special — this calf is only the PDZA’s second tapir baby in the last 120 years!

Notably, the baby is a Malayan tapir, a rare species flagged as endangered on the IUCN’s Red List. Like the pygmy hippos we’ve grown to love around here, their populations are declining due to habitat loss caused by deforestation and human development. This tapir species resides across three different regions — mainland Southeast Asia (Thailand/Myanmar), Southern Thailand/Malaysia, and the island of Sumatra, Indonesia — which adds challenges to tracking an already rare population. The new baby is a successful birth achieved through a pairing under the Malayan Tapir’s Species Survival Plan.

Like all new babies, the first few weeks and months are a critical bonding period for our fuzzy friend so the first few months will have the baby behind the scenes of the Asian Forest Sanctuary. The calf will use this time for very important things — naps, eating, and learning to use that little trunk for exploring the environment. Zoo visitors can look forward to seeing the calf in the early spring, but in the interim you can enjoy all the clips Point Defiance is sharing on their social platforms: BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.