In Nicaragua, a fight to save endangered tapirs Thirteen tapirs lounge in the bushes of Ticuantepe Zoo, in eastern Nicaragua, their bellies plump with leaves and fruit -- blissfully unaware of the peril faced by their kind. The largest land mammals in Central America, the brown, pig-like animals with sloping snouts came into the world in captivity, in an enclosure a short distance from the country's Masaya Volcano, under a scheme to save their endangered species. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITE