White-lipped peccary
| White-lipped peccary | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Synapsida |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Family: | Tayassuidae |
| Genus: |
Tayassu Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim, 1814 |
| Species: | T. pecari |
| Binomial name | |
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Tayassu pecari (Link, 1795) |
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The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), is a hog-like animal found in Central and South America. Most of its range is in rainforests, but it is also known from a wide range of other habitats such as dry forests, grasslands, mangrove, Cerrado and dry xerophytic areas. It lives in herds of 20–300 individuals that on average take up about 120 km2 to fully function. This species is omnivorous, feeding mostly on fruit, and are usually found traveling great distances to obtain it. If this resource is in demand and difficult to find, peccaries will eat leaves, stems, or animal parts. White-lipped peccaries have several unique attributes that allow them to stay with and identify their herd, which is essential for their survival in the wild.
The white-lipped peccary lives to be an average of 13 years old and can give birth to two young at a time. The head and body length ranges from 90–139 cm, the shoulder height is between 40 and 60 cm, the tail length is from 3–6 cm, and the adult weight is 25–40 kg. Their color is generally brown or black. The coat is bristly and has hairs running lengthways down the spine growing longer than the hairs running down the body, making a crest, which stands up when the peccary becomes excited. The peccary has a round body with a long snout that ends in a circular disk where the nasal cavity starts. They have white markings that start below the snout and run to the cheek area just below the eyes.
White-lipped peccaries are omnivores feeding on fruits, nuts, vegetation, and small amounts of animal matter. Their main predators are the jaguar, puma, and potentially boa constrictors. Since the white-lipped peccary relies heavily on fruit, they travel to where the fruit and other essential resources are located. The fruiting season dictates most of their behavior. Fruit is more abundant in primary forests rather than secondary or coastal forests, so their populations are more dense in these regions. Generally, a period of fruit shortage occurs during the end of the wet season, so the consumption of secondary foods, such as leaves, stems, and animal parts, is increased.
The white-lipped peccary is native to Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. An example ecoregion of occurrence is the Belizean pine forests. The peccary is regionally extinct in El Salvador and Uruguay. They thrive in dense, humid, tropical forests, and can also be found in a wide range of other habitats such dry forests, grasslands, mangrove, Cerrado and dry xerophytic areas. They range from sea level to an altitude of 1,900 m (6,200 ft). When these species roam in their range land, they can be very loud, clattering their teeth and grunting to one another to communicate and stay within the herd. They communicate with olfactory, acoustic, and physical contact to keep together in the herd. This is essential when warding off predators such as the jaguar, because it may not attack when 200 peccaries are in a herd.
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Wikipedia