Warthog
The common warthog, often called the African warthog, is a wild pig found across the savannas and open grasslands of Africa south of the Sahara. It is one of the most recognizable animals on the continent, thanks to its curved tusks, the fleshy growths on its face that give the species its name, and the habit of running with its tail held straight up. It feeds mostly on grasses, roots and bulbs, often dropping to its calloused front knees to dig and graze close to the ground. Warthogs live in small family groups called sounders and spend the night in burrows, usually ones dug by aardvarks. Adults back into these dens rear first, keeping their tusks pointed outward as a last line of defense. Lions, leopards, hyenas, cheetahs and crocodiles all prey on them regularly. The species is still widespread and listed as Least Concern, but the IUCN considers its overall numbers to be decreasing because of hunting, drought and the loss of open habitat.
What is a warthog? Africa's wild pig
A warthog is a wild member of the pig family, Suidae, that lives only in Africa. When people talk about the African warthog they almost always mean the common warthog, Phacochoerus africanus, the animal shown on this page and the one visitors meet on safari from Senegal to South Africa. Its name comes from the thick, wart like pads on its face, and the scientific name says the same thing in Greek: Phacochoerus roughly means wart pig. In Afrikaans it is called vlakvark, the pig of the plains, which describes its habitat perfectly. There is a second, much less known species, the desert warthog, Phacochoerus aethiopicus, which lives only in the dry lands of northern Kenya, eastern Ethiopia and Somalia. It looks very similar, but it has no front teeth in the upper jaw and the tips of its ears are bent backward. Warthogs are related to bushpigs, giant forest hogs and the Eurasian wild boar, yet they split from them long ago and have a body built for open grassland: long legs for sprinting, sparse bristly hair, and a broad, flat snout made for grazing and digging.
How big is a warthog? Size, tusks and warts
An adult common warthog stands about 63 to 85 centimeters (25 to 33 inches) at the shoulder and measures roughly 0.9 to 1.5 meters (3 to 5 feet) from snout to rump, plus a thin tail with a tuft at the end. Males are clearly larger, usually weighing between 60 and 150 kilograms (130 and 330 pounds), while females weigh around 45 to 75 kilograms (100 to 165 pounds). The skin is gray to brown and almost bare, with a long mane of coarse hair running down the neck and back that can look reddish or pale depending on the mud the animal has been rolling in. The tusks are its most famous feature. The upper pair are canine teeth that curve out and up from the sides of the snout and keep growing throughout life; in big old males they can reach more than 60 centimeters (2 feet), although around 25 centimeters (10 inches) is more typical. The shorter lower tusks rub against them and stay razor sharp. The warts are not true warts but thick pads of skin. Males have two prominent pairs, one below the eyes and one near the tusks, while females have a smaller pair. They cushion the face when males clash head to head during the breeding season.
Where do warthogs live?
Common warthogs are found across a vast stretch of Africa south of the Sahara, ranging from Mauritania and Senegal in the west to Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia in the east, and south through Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia into Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. The IUCN lists them as resident in 39 countries, while in the Republic of the Congo they may already be gone. They favor open savannas, short grasslands, floodplains and areas with scattered shrubs where visibility is good and food grows close to the ground. They avoid dense rainforest and true desert, which is why they are absent from most of the Congo Basin and from the driest parts of the Sahara and the Namib, though they cope well with dry conditions as long as water is within reach. Proximity to burrows matters as much as food, since warthogs depend on them for shelter every night and for raising young, so they are often found in areas where aardvarks have left plenty of old holes. Altitude is not much of a barrier: the IUCN records them from sea level up to about 3,500 meters (11,500 feet), and they graze on the high grasslands of places like the Bale Mountains in Ethiopia. They also adapt to farmland edges, which brings them into conflict with people.
What do warthogs eat?
Warthogs are grazers first and foremost, and short, fresh grasses make up the bulk of their diet for most of the year. In the rainy season they nibble the tips of new grass and pick seeds from the stems. When grass dries out and becomes scarce, they switch to digging, using the hard upper edge of their snout and their tusks to pull up roots, bulbs, tubers and rhizomes rich in stored energy. To reach food at ground level they drop onto the calloused pads on their front legs and shuffle forward on their knees, a posture so typical that the pads are already visible on young animals. Fruits, bark and fallen flowers are eaten when available. Warthogs are not strict vegetarians: they occasionally eat insects, bird eggs, carrion and even soil to obtain minerals, though meat is a very small part of what they take in. They like to drink regularly and often visit waterholes in the heat of the day, but in very dry areas they can go for months without drinking, getting enough moisture from bulbs and roots. This flexible menu, which shifts with the seasons, is one of the reasons the species has survived across so much of Africa.
Warthog behavior: sounders, dens and the raised tail
Warthogs are active during the day and spend the night inside burrows, which protect them from predators and from cold, since they have little fat and almost no fur to keep warm. A family group is called a sounder and is usually made up of one or a few adult females with their young; daughters often stay with their mothers, while young males leave and form small bachelor groups. Adult males tend to live alone and join the females mainly in the breeding season, when they fight by clashing heads and tusks. A warthog den is rarely dug from scratch. Most are old aardvark holes that the warthogs enlarge and keep using, and a single family may rotate between several burrows in its home range. Piglets run in head first, but adults back in rear first, so that anything trying to follow meets a wall of tusks. When alarmed, the group sprints off with tails held straight up, which may help the young keep sight of their mothers in tall grass. Warthogs also love to wallow in mud, which cools them and protects their skin from sun and biting insects, and afterward they rub against termite mounds and tree trunks. Home ranges overlap with those of neighbors, and they are not territorial in a strict sense.
Warthog babies: piglets and life in the den
Warthogs breed seasonally, and in much of their range the piglets are born at the start of the rains, when fresh grass is plentiful. Pregnancy lasts about five and a half to six months, around 170 days. A few weeks before giving birth, the female leaves her group and chooses a burrow, often lining it with grass, where she gives birth alone. A litter usually has two to four piglets, although as many as eight have been recorded. Since the mother has only four teats, large litters rarely survive in full. Newborn warthogs are small, weighing under a kilogram (about 2 pounds), and they spend their first days hidden in the dark den, which helps them stay warm because they cannot yet control their body temperature well. At around two to three weeks they start making short trips outside, diving back in at the first sign of danger, and soon begin nibbling grass beside their mother. Nursing continues for several months, and piglets are fully weaned by about five or six months. Daughters usually remain in their mother's sounder, while young males drift away. Females can breed from about 18 months to 2 years, but males rarely get a chance to mate before they are four or five years old and big enough to compete.
Do lions eat warthogs? Predators and defense
Yes. Lions eat warthogs regularly, and in some parks they are among the most common prey a lion takes, even though a warthog is a small meal for a pride. Lions often wait at burrow entrances in the morning, or dig warthogs out of their dens, which can be a long and noisy job. Leopards are another major predator, ambushing warthogs near cover and sometimes taking piglets from the edge of a burrow. Spotted hyenas and cheetahs chase them in the open and tend to target young or smaller animals, and African wild dogs also hunt them where the two share a range. At rivers and waterholes, Nile crocodiles are a constant risk, and piglets can be taken by large eagles, pythons and jackals. A warthog's first defense is speed: it can sprint at around 48 kilometers per hour (30 miles per hour) and usually heads straight for the nearest burrow. When escape is impossible, it turns and fights, and an adult male's tusks can wound or even kill a predator. Females defend their piglets fiercely and have been seen chasing off cheetahs and jackals. This constant pressure keeps sounders alert and rarely far from a hole they can back into.
Are warthogs endangered?
No. The IUCN lists the common warthog as Least Concern in its most recent assessment, from 2016, because it is still widespread, common in many protected areas and able to live in a wide range of habitats. That does not mean everything is fine. The same assessment describes the global population trend as decreasing, and no reliable count of how many warthogs exist in Africa has been made. Hunting for meat is the main pressure, especially in West Africa, where warthogs have vanished from many areas outside parks, and in the Republic of the Congo the species may already be gone. Expanding farms and settlements are taking over the open grasslands they need, and severe droughts can kill large numbers, as happened in parts of East Africa. Farmers sometimes kill them for raiding crops. Warthogs are also a natural reservoir of African swine fever, a virus carried by soft ticks in their burrows that does not make them sick but is deadly to domestic pigs, which can turn ranchers against them. The good news is that warthogs breed quickly and recover well when protected, and they are still easy to see in parks such as Kruger, the Maasai Mara, Etosha, Queen Elizabeth and Mole.
Where it is found
The Warthog can be found in places such as:
