A (Sort Of) Pig of Another Stripe

My students were dissecting pigs this evening, so I offer up these guys to your more tender mercies:

Collared Peccary (Pecari tajacu), Omaha Zoo, Omaha, NE 12/30/2011

This is a Collared Peccary, (Pecari tajacu). They occur from the southwestern US south through much of South America, but this one lives in the Omaha Zoo. While they may look like pigs, peccaries actually make up the family Tayassuidae, which is native to the New World. (True pigs are Old-World species in the family Suidae.)

Chacoan Peccary, (Catagonus wagneri), Sunset Zoo, Manhattan, KS 5/22/2013

This one's a Peccary, but it's not a Collared Peccary. It's a Chacoan Peccary (Catagonus wagneri). Here's a closer look (apparently they love grapevines):

Chacoan Peccary, (Catagonus wagneri), Sunset Zoo, Manhattan, KS 5/22/2013

This species is confined to thorn forests in a small area of Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina. There are roughly 3000 in the world, and the IUCN lists them as endangered. (1) The one shown above lives at the Sunset Zoo in Manhattan, Kansas, one of several zoos attempting to breed the species. However, since the largest threats to the species include large-scale habitat alteration for farming and hunting by an ever-increasing human population in the region, (2) it seems unlikely that reintroduction programs will be starting anytime soon.

If we do lose the species, it won't be for the first time: Chacoan Peccaries are a member of a very select club -- they were first described as a fossil species, in 1930. It wasn't until 1975 that the local knowledge of their existence was published. (3) There is still a good deal of discussion about the role of humans in the disappearances of the world's Pleistocene faunas. If we lose the Chacoan Peccary a second time, there won't be any need for debate -- we'll know we were responsible.

(1) IUCN 2013. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 15 April 2014.

(2) Altrichter, M., & Boaglio, G. I. (2004). Distribution and relative abundance of peccaries in the Argentine Chaco: associations with human factors. Biological Conservation, 116(2), 217-225.

(3) Wetzel, R. M. (1977). THE EXTINCTION OF PECCARIES AND A NEW CASE OF SURVIVAL*. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 288(1), 538-544.