Warthog

Fascinating facts about the Warthog

• A warthog's most striking weapons are its tusks: the upper canines grow to 25.5 cm (10 in) long, with a cross-section about 4.5 cm deep and 2.5 cm wide, and they curve more than 90° from the root. The lower pair, though shorter, becomes razor-sharp each time the mouth opens because it rubs against the upper pair. These oversized, curved teeth act like scaled-down elephant tusks, delivering severe wounds in fights and deterring predators.
• Warthogs are built for digging: they bend their front feet backward and shuffle on their wrists while feeding, a motion made possible by calloused pads that develop early in the fetus. This unique wrist-walking lets them excavate bulbs and even rhizomes, and to create or enter burrows, often reusing abandoned aardvark holes, where they sleep and hide from heat or predators.
• A warthog's pregnancy lasts 170-175 days, the longest of any pig, after which the sow retreats to a solitary burrow to give birth to two-to-eight piglets (most litters contain three or four). The newborns stay underground for six-to-seven weeks, nursing in the safety of the den before venturing out, a strategy that shields them from extreme temperatures and predators during their most vulnerable stage.
• In 1999, southern-African warthogs were estimated at about 250,000 individuals, with typical densities of 1-10 animals per km² in protected reserves. Remarkably, a short-grass plain in Kenya's Nakuru National Park supported 77 warthogs per km², showing how habitat quality can boost numbers dramatically. These figures help managers gauge how drought and hunting might push local populations toward collapse.
• When a predator appears, a warthog can bolt like a sports car, reaching speeds of up to 48 km/h (30 mph). It darts with its tail held upright as a warning flag and darts into its burrow rear-first, tusks pointing outward.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Warthog

With four curved tusks, a mane of bristles, and a habit of trotting away with its tail held like a flagpole, the warthog is one of Africa's most charismatic characters. Found across the continent's savannas from Senegal to South Africa, warthogs live by practical ingenuity: sleeping in borrowed aardvark burrows, reversing in backwards so tusks face the door, and kneeling to graze with a posture so habitual it grew calluses into their biology.

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