New World “pigs” that travel in smelling squadrons
Peccaries, also called javelinas or skunk pigs, look like pigs but belong to their own American family, Tayassuidae. They roam from the southwestern United States to South America and Trinidad in herds called squadrons, whose members recognise one another by a powerful shared scent.
Adults usually measure 90 to 130 centimetres and weigh 20 to 40 kilograms. Like pigs, they have a disc-tipped snout, small eyes and walk on their two middle toes, but their digestion works differently: a three-chambered stomach ferments food at the front of the gut, whereas pigs ferment in the hindgut. Their tusks are short, straight and locked together, which stops the jaw moving sideways but suits cracking hard seeds and slicing roots, and grinding them produces a chatter that warns predators off. Small rounded ears and a tiny tail also separate them from true pigs.
Their diet runs from roots, grasses, seeds, fruit and prickly pear cactus to insects, grubs and occasional small animals. Scent glands under each eye and on the back mark territories of 30 to 280 hectares, and herd members rub against each other to share the smell, which matters because their eyesight is poor. Collared peccaries travel in bands of about 8 to 15 and have moved into the suburbs of Phoenix and Tucson, while white-lipped peccaries of the rainforest may gather in herds of more than a hundred.
Three species are firmly recognised, each in its own genus, plus a possible fourth, the giant peccary of the Brazilian Amazon, which lives in pairs. The Chacoan peccary was described from fossils and presumed extinct until it turned up alive in Paraguay in 1975, though local people had always known it.
Peccaries first appear in North American rocks of the early Miocene and crossed into South America roughly three million years ago, once the Isthmus of Panama joined the continents. Two North American genera died out about 12,000 years ago, after humans arrived. The English name comes from the Carib pakira, while javelina derives from Spanish for wild boar.
Source: Peccary
