Phacochoerus aethiopicus
| Desert warthog | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Family: | Suidae |
| Genus: | Phacochoerus |
| Species: | P. aethiopicus |
| Binomial name | |
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Phacochoerus aethiopicus (Pallas, 1766) |
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The desert warthog (Phacochoerus aethiopicus) is a species of even-toed ungulate in the pig family (Suidae), found in northern Kenya and Somalia, and possibly Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. This is the range of the extant subspecies, commonly known as the Somali warthog (P. a. delamerei). Another subspecies, commonly known as the Cape warthog (P. a. aethiopicus), became extinct around 1865, but formerly occurred in South Africa.
Fossils have been found from the Holocene epoch showing that two divergent lines of warthogs (Phacochoerus spp.) were in existence thousands of years ago. The ancestors of the present day common warthog (P. africanus) had a different number of incisors than the ancestral desert warthog (P. aethiopicus) line. During the late nineteenth century, P. aethiopicus became extinct in South Africa. Subsequently, study of as well as morphological analysis has shown that the East African population of warthogs, previously thought to be a variant of the common warthog, are in fact surviving members of the putatively extinct P. aethiopicus.
The desert warthog is a stockily-built animal growing to an average length of 125 centimetres (49 in) and weight of 75 kilograms (165 lb) with males being larger than females. It has a rather flattened head with distinctive facial paired protuberances ("warts") and large curving canine teeth which protrude as tusks. These are not present in juveniles but grow over the course of a few years. They are larger in males than in females. The body is sparsely covered with bristly hairs and a more dense region of hairs runs along the spine and forms a crest. The tail is long and thin and is tipped with a small brush of coarse hair. The general colour is mid to dark brown but the crest is sometimes whitish. The desert warthog differs from the bushpig (Potamochoerus porcus) and the giant forest hog (Hylochoerus meinertzhageni) in having facial warts and proportionately larger tusks.
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Wikipedia