“…and today we’re talking about a forest pig that can clear the hacienda after every meal. But more on that later.”
When you’re a small pork family in the forest, staying together is the key to a happy life. But it’s easy to get separated among the thick foliage and tall trees. How can you see each other with all the shrubs and bushes in the way? How can you hear each other with the wind rustling through the leaves? No, it’s best to smell your way back to hearth and home. The javelina just just that, and they’ve developed a stinky fingerprint to tell each other apart in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.
Description of the Javelina
- Looks like a little wild boar or razorback mixed with a mouse
- Short, squat pig body with stubby pig legs
- No tail
- Course and bristly brown, gray, and black fur
- It gets its name from the white chinny chin chin it has, making it look like it has a beard or like it’s had too many powdered doughnuts
- Truffle snout ending in a cartilaginous disc
- Has four large pointed tusks that aren’t visible when its mouth is closed
Measure up
Height
20-24 inches (510-610 mm)
Javelinas are the same heights as…
- 1/155,760 the length of Tabago
- the height of the Mona Lisa
- ⅛ a pipe organ cactus
Weight
35-60 pounds (16-27 kg)
Javelinas are the same weight as…
- 1/3rd of the bronze cast of the Thinker at the met.
- One 29 inch Vevor demolition jackhammer
- A standard western horse saddle
Fact: There are many casts of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. Its real name is actually, The Poet because it was inspired by Dante from Dante’s Inferno.
Fast Facts about the Javelina
- Range: The rainforests and arid scrublands of Central and South America as far north as Southern California and as far south as Argentina
- Diet: Omnivorous like pigs – mainly eats agave leaves and pricky pear cactus but it also eats fruits, veggies, roots, grass, leaves, eggs, bugs, and even small animals like frogs and lizards.
- Behavior:
- Eaten by jaguars, coyotes, cougars, wolves, bobcats
- Can quickly snap their tusks together to make a loud crack that scares away predators
- They actually have digestive systems similar to ruminants like cows since they have foregut fermentation instead of the hindgut fermentation of your garden variety pig
- Lives about 24 years in the wild
Major Fact: The Family that Stinks Together
Javelinas, also known as collared peccaries, have distinctive scent glands that play a crucial role in their social behavior and territory marking.
These scent glands are located on their back, specifically in the mid-dorsal lumbar area, about eight inches anterior to the base of their tail. They also have scent glands below each eye.
The secretions from these glands are quite malodorous, often compared to the scent of a skunk. Javelinas use these scent glands to mark their territory by rubbing against rocks, tree stumps, and even each other.
They have a unique social behavior where they rub their scent glands on each other to help identify family members and strengthen social bonds. This scent-marking behavior ensures that each member of the group carries a combined scent, which helps them recognize each other and maintain group cohesion.
The strong odor produced by javelinas’ scent glands does not significantly deter predators. While the smell is quite pungent and can be unpleasant, it primarily serves social and territorial purposes rather than acting as a defense mechanism against predators. Javelinas rely more on their sharp tusks and group behavior to protect themselves from threats like coyotes and mountain lions.
However, human javelina hunters take care not to get the scent glands on the edible meat, or else it will literally ruin it.
Ending: So don’t be picky, hang out with kindred pigs, and sniff that stinky musk like the javelina here in LDT.