PRECOCIAL PIGS. Strange Things Always Come in Threes

by Jack Ewing

Have you ever noticed how strange new things always seem to come in threes? It happens to me all the time. Like the other day when I saw three collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu) on the same day. A collared peccary, called "zahino" in local Spanish, is a wild pig about the size of a border collie. For anybody other than me, seeing three of them in one day here at Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge is no big deal. Although I have lived here since 1972, I had never seen a peccary in the wild until a few days ago. Many volunteers come here, stay a week or two, and help on environmental projects. In that short time many of them see the zahinos. Our guides see them all the time as do our guests. My brother Rex came for his first visit in 14 years. He and his wife LaVonne did an overnight jungle camping tour with a sharp-eyed local guide named Deiner. I volunteered to carry the food up to the camp that afternoon. There had been a lot of collared peccary sightings recently, and I figured I had a good chance of seeing one during my hike up to the camp. I saw tracks everywhere and even caught a whiff of their musky scent. The ground had been dug up in several places where they had routed around with their noses for roots and tubers, but no collared peccary. When I got to the camp with the food, Rex and LaVonne couldn't wait to tell me about the group of wild pigs they had seen, five of them.

"They were just a little way off the trail," said Rex excitedly, "a big dark gray female and a couple of young. The babies were a reddish color. There were a couple more pigs farther back in the forest, but we couldn't see them very well."

"I don't believe this. This is unreal!" I exclaimed in exasperation. "I've been looking for a collared peccary for 28 years and you see them the first time you go for a walk in the jungle. It's not fair."

"It was really exciting," Rex went on, oblivious to my ranting. "The female gnashed her teeth together till they clattered and kind of shook her head at us, but the little ones seemed curious. I was a little nervous but Deiner said not to worry. He had a big stick in his hand just in case they did something unexpected. The female didn't have any tusks showing, but she stood about as high a my knee. She could do some damage if she took a notion to."

Rex went on to say that after a few minutes the big female led the group of zahinos off into the jungle. The two piglets followed reluctantly.

Ronald, another Hacienda Barú guide, once encountered a large female with four half-grown young. He was alone when he heard them close by. Peeking around a broad leafed heliconia plant he was startled to see the peccaries so close. The young sniffed at him and nosed around the heliconia plant while the mother curled her upper lips, to bare her wicked looking fangs, clacked her teeth together and snorted. Afraid to move, Ronald held his ground, but clutched his machete close. After a while the young zahinos lost interest in him and followed the female into the darkness of the jungle.

The two experiences described above are the most aggressive collared peccary behavior I have ever heard about. In both cases the mother was wary of the humans, but concerned about her curious young. Not wanting to flee without the piglets, she gnashed her teeth together, making a clack, clack, clack sound as if to say, "That's close enough." On other occasions when Hacienda Barú guides have come across groups of a dozen or more zahinos, these small herds have showed no sign of aggressiveness, only alarm. Another Costa Rican peccary species, however, has a much more fearsome reputation.

Larger and reputedly more dangerous than the collared peccary is the white-lipped peccary (Dicotyles pecari) known locally as the cariblanco. Shortly after the founding of the Corcovado National Park on the Peninsula of Osa and an agressive anti poaching program by the park rangers, populations of these cloven hoofed mammals increased rapidly. Human hunters, the peccary's primary predator, had been temporarily eliminated as a serious threat, and their natural predators, the jaguar and puma were far too few to keep their numbers in check. Reliable witnesses have related to me encounters with groups estimated at between 100 and 200 animals. "When that many wild pigs move through the forest, they trample and eat anything that crosses their path. You'll hear them before you see them and you'd better look for a tree to climb, because you may not be able to get out of their way," related a park guard from San Pedrillo station in Corcovado National Park.

My daughter Natalie once had to climb a tree to escape the white-lipped peccary. She said there were about fifty animals in the group that passed directly across the area where she and her friends had been standing. With no time to look for a better tree, Natalie climbed a spindly little sapling, managing to get about a meter above the ground. Fortunately it didn't take long for the cariblancos to traverse the area and she was able to drop safely to the ground from her precarious perch.

People who live on the Osa Peninsula tell the story of five gold miners who had been evicted from the park. Hoping to evade the park rangers and get in a few days work on their claim, the miners sneaked in to the area with provisions for several days. A week passed without their return. Worried friends and family members mounted a search. Upon arrival at the gold claim, they found the camp in a shambles, hundreds of cariblanco tracks and the skeletal remains of the missing miners. The macabre scene painted a picture of sleeping men trampled, killed and eaten by a large herd of white-lipped peccary that happened across their camp in the night.

This is a fascinating, spine tingling story, but I have a few doubts about its validity. First of all no gold miner from Osa is likely to be surprised by a herd of peccary, especially not when there are five men in the camp. Second, peccaries are diurnal and seldom move around at night. And third I have heard this story three times from three different people, each one of whom claims it happened in a different place and at a different time. In each case, the teller didn't know any of the victims personally, but had a friend who did. It smacks of urban legend, or shall I say "jungle legend." Additionally, people who have lived in cariblanco territory all their lives tell me that most stories about the wild pigs' fierceness are greatly exaggerated.

To me the most amazing thing about both peccary species, is that they still exist. Since the first humans appeared in the Americas, more than 10,000 years ago, wild pigs have been hunted for their meat and hides. Yet both Central American species and a South American species have managed to survive in reasonably large numbers, while many other heavily hunted mammal species have become extinct or nearly so. Both the collared and the white-lipped peccary are considered threatened and are listed in appendix II of the CITES convention for the control of trade in endangered species. Large herds of cariblanco no longer wander the wilds of Corcovado. Lowered park budgets and ranger staff have resulted in an uncontrolled wave of poaching which severely threatens the wild pigs and other species. In other places however, such as the area around Hacienda Barú, zahino numbers are higher than ever and cariblanco have been sighted in the area for the first time in over 40 years. This is due to increased vigilance by private property owners.

In spite of the threat from human predation, peccaries range from Arizona to Argentina in every type of habitat imaginable, from dry desert to extremely wet tropical rain forest. In fact their adaptability has probably been their most powerful survival tool. In the deserts of Mexico and the southern United States, prickly pear is the collared peccary's preferred food. In the humid Central American tropics, roots and tubers form the major portion of their diet. Palm nuts and other large seeds are also a favorite item. All peccaries will eat meat, but aren't very well equipped to hunt and capture wild game. The protein in their diet consists mostly of large insects, snails and carrion, or if you choose to believe the jungle legend above, sleeping gold miners.

Although peccary are related to domestic pigs and resemble them in many respects, their young are precocial whereas domestic pigs are not. I usually don't use words that send my readers scurrying for a dictionary, but in this case I have made an exception. Let me explain. I usually write from personal experience, but as I mentioned earlier I have only seen peccary on one occasion, so this time I had to do a bit of research prior to writing. I looked in three different books -- there is that magic number three again -- and all three said that peccary young are precocial. The meaning wasn't obvious from the context, and my dictionary doesn't list the word precocial. The fourth book I consulted, The Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide to Costa Rica, by Les Beletsky, solved the mystery with the following statement. "The young are precocial, meaning that they can walk and follow their mother within a few days after birth." This is in contrast to domestic pigs which are not precocial, being quite helpless for some time after birth, much like a litter of puppies or kittens.

In my quest to find the collared peccary at Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge, I often smelled them. Zahinos have a scent gland on their rump about a finger's length above the tail. Rubbing the scent gland on a tree trunk and defecating and urinating at the base, is a method of marking territory. The smell is strong and musky. Another common sign of the presence of peccary are the small sharp pointed tracks in the mud. These are similar to deer tracks, but tend to point downward. On several occasions I was close enough to hear the characteristic alarm bark emitted by the collared peccary when excited. Once I surprised a big one that let out an enormous "hurummpf" that nearly scared me out of my wits. It then went charging off through the jungle "hummpf, hummpf, hummpf," until it was out of hearing distance. All I got to see of that one was the movement of the foliage as the zahino forced its way through the low lying vegetation.

But finally my day came. Hearing a twig crack about 10 meters off to my right, I turned in time to see the dark shape running past, dodging around a tree and turning down into a nearby stream. It was over in five seconds. I kept on walking, seeing tracks and soil disturbed by routing. Less than five minutes later, two zahinos roused off to my left, ran through a patch of heliconia snorting and barking, curved around and crossed the trail about ten meters in front of me. That made three collared peccary in one day. It wasn't much of a sighting, but I wasn't complaining. After thirty years of searching I was as happy as a lark. Like I say, strange new things always come in threes.

Have you ever noticed how strange new things always seem to come in threes? It happens to me all the time. Like the other day when I saw three collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu) on the same day. A collared peccary, called "zahino" in local Spanish, is a wild pig about the size of a border collie. For anybody other than me, seeing three of them in one day here at Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge is no big deal. Although I have lived here since 1972, I had never seen a peccary in the wild until a few days ago. Many volunteers come here, stay a week or two, and help on environmental projects. In that short time many of them see the zahinos. Our guides see them all the time as do our guests. My brother Rex came for his first visit in 14 years. He and his wife LaVonne did an overnight jungle camping tour with a sharp-eyed local guide named Deiner. I volunteered to carry the food up to the camp that afternoon. There had been a lot of collared peccary sightings recently, and I figured I had a good chance of seeing one during my hike up to the camp. I saw tracks everywhere and even caught a whiff of their musky scent. The ground had been dug up in several places where they had routed around with their noses for roots and tubers, but no collared peccary. When I got to the camp with the food, Rex and LaVonne couldn't wait to tell me about the group of wild pigs they had seen, five of them.

"They were just a little way off the trail," said Rex excitedly, "a big dark gray female and a couple of young. The babies were a reddish color. There were a couple more pigs farther back in the forest, but we couldn't see them very well."

"I don't believe this. This is unreal!" I exclaimed in exasperation. "I've been looking for a collared peccary for 28 years and you see them the first time you go for a walk in the jungle. It's not fair."

"It was really exciting," Rex went on, oblivious to my ranting. "The female gnashed her teeth together till they clattered and kind of shook her head at us, but the little ones seemed curious. I was a little nervous but Deiner said not to worry. He had a big stick in his hand just in case they did something unexpected. The female didn't have any tusks showing, but she stood about as high a my knee. She could do some damage if she took a notion to."

Rex went on to say that after a few minutes the big female led the group of zahinos off into the jungle. The two piglets followed reluctantly.

Ronald, another Hacienda Barú guide, once encountered a large female with four half-grown young. He was alone when he heard them close by. Peeking around a broad leafed heliconia plant he was startled to see the peccaries so close. The young sniffed at him and nosed around the heliconia plant while the mother curled her upper lips, to bare her wicked looking fangs, clacked her teeth together and snorted. Afraid to move, Ronald held his ground, but clutched his machete close. After a while the young zahinos lost interest in him and followed the female into the darkness of the jungle.

The two experiences described above are the most aggressive collared peccary behavior I have ever heard about. In both cases the mother was wary of the humans, but concerned about her curious young. Not wanting to flee without the piglets, she gnashed her teeth together, making a clack, clack, clack sound as if to say, "That's close enough." On other occasions when Hacienda Barú guides have come across groups of a dozen or more zahinos, these small herds have showed no sign of aggressiveness, only alarm. Another Costa Rican peccary species, however, has a much more fearsome reputation.

Larger and reputedly more dangerous than the collared peccary is the white-lipped peccary (Dicotyles pecari) known locally as the cariblanco. Shortly after the founding of the Corcovado National Park on the Peninsula of Osa and an agressive anti poaching program by the park rangers, populations of these cloven hoofed mammals increased rapidly. Human hunters, the peccary's primary predator, had been temporarily eliminated as a serious threat, and their natural predators, the jaguar and puma were far too few to keep their numbers in check. Reliable witnesses have related to me encounters with groups estimated at between 100 and 200 animals. "When that many wild pigs move through the forest, they trample and eat anything that crosses their path. You'll hear them before you see them and you'd better look for a tree to climb, because you may not be able to get out of their way," related a park guard from San Pedrillo station in Corcovado National Park.

My daughter Natalie once had to climb a tree to escape the white-lipped peccary. She said there were about fifty animals in the group that passed directly across the area where she and her friends had been standing. With no time to look for a better tree, Natalie climbed a spindly little sapling, managing to get about a meter above the ground. Fortunately it didn't take long for the cariblancos to traverse the area and she was able to drop safely to the ground from her precarious perch.

People who live on the Osa Peninsula tell the story of five gold miners who had been evicted from the park. Hoping to evade the park rangers and get in a few days work on their claim, the miners sneaked in to the area with provisions for several days. A week passed without their return. Worried friends and family members mounted a search. Upon arrival at the gold claim, they found the camp in a shambles, hundreds of cariblanco tracks and the skeletal remains of the missing miners. The macabre scene painted a picture of sleeping men trampled, killed and eaten by a large herd of white-lipped peccary that happened across their camp in the night.

This is a fascinating, spine tingling story, but I have a few doubts about its validity. First of all no gold miner from Osa is likely to be surprised by a herd of peccary, especially not when there are five men in the camp. Second, peccaries are diurnal and seldom move around at night. And third I have heard this story three times from three different people, each one of whom claims it happened in a different place and at a different time. In each case, the teller didn't know any of the victims personally, but had a friend who did. It smacks of urban legend, or shall I say "jungle legend." Additionally, people who have lived in cariblanco territory all their lives tell me that most stories about the wild pigs' fierceness are greatly exaggerated.

To me the most amazing thing about both peccary species, is that they still exist. Since the first humans appeared in the Americas, more than 10,000 years ago, wild pigs have been hunted for their meat and hides. Yet both Central American species and a South American species have managed to survive in reasonably large numbers, while many other heavily hunted mammal species have become extinct or nearly so. Both the collared and the white-lipped peccary are considered threatened and are listed in appendix II of the CITES convention for the control of trade in endangered species. Large herds of cariblanco no longer wander the wilds of Corcovado. Lowered park budgets and ranger staff have resulted in an uncontrolled wave of poaching which severely threatens the wild pigs and other species. In other places however, such as the area around Hacienda Barú, zahino numbers are higher than ever and cariblanco have been sighted in the area for the first time in over 40 years. This is due to increased vigilance by private property owners.

In spite of the threat from human predation, peccaries range from Arizona to Argentina in every type of habitat imaginable, from dry desert to extremely wet tropical rain forest. In fact their adaptability has probably been their most powerful survival tool. In the deserts of Mexico and the southern United States, prickly pear is the collared peccary's preferred food. In the humid Central American tropics, roots and tubers form the major portion of their diet. Palm nuts and other large seeds are also a favorite item. All peccaries will eat meat, but aren't very well equipped to hunt and capture wild game. The protein in their diet consists mostly of large insects, snails and carrion, or if you choose to believe the jungle legend above, sleeping gold miners.

Although peccary are related to domestic pigs and resemble them in many respects, their young are precocial whereas domestic pigs are not. I usually don't use words that send my readers scurrying for a dictionary, but in this case I have made an exception. Let me explain. I usually write from personal experience, but as I mentioned earlier I have only seen peccary on one occasion, so this time I had to do a bit of research prior to writing. I looked in three different books -- there is that magic number three again -- and all three said that peccary young are precocial. The meaning wasn't obvious from the context, and my dictionary doesn't list the word precocial. The fourth book I consulted, The Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide to Costa Rica, by Les Beletsky, solved the mystery with the following statement. "The young are precocial, meaning that they can walk and follow their mother within a few days after birth." This is in contrast to domestic pigs which are not precocial, being quite helpless for some time after birth, much like a litter of puppies or kittens.

In my quest to find the collared peccary at Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge, I often smelled them. Zahinos have a scent gland on their rump about a finger's length above the tail. Rubbing the scent gland on a tree trunk and defecating and urinating at the base, is a method of marking territory. The smell is strong and musky. Another common sign of the presence of peccary are the small sharp pointed tracks in the mud. These are similar to deer tracks, but tend to point downward. On several occasions I was close enough to hear the characteristic alarm bark emitted by the collared peccary when excited. Once I surprised a big one that let out an enormous "hurummpf" that nearly scared me out of my wits. It then went charging off through the jungle "hummpf, hummpf, hummpf," until it was out of hearing distance. All I got to see of that one was the movement of the foliage as the zahino forced its way through the low lying vegetation.

But finally my day came. Hearing a twig crack about 10 meters off to my right, I turned in time to see the dark shape running past, dodging around a tree and turning down into a nearby stream. It was over in five seconds. I kept on walking, seeing tracks and soil disturbed by routing. Less than five minutes later, two zahinos roused off to my left, ran through a patch of heliconia snorting and barking, curved around and crossed the trail about ten meters in front of me. That made three collared peccary in one day. It wasn't much of a sighting, but I wasn't complaining. After thirty years of searching I was as happy as a lark. Like I say, strange new things always come in threes.

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Focussed in Birdwatching Costa Rica and Ecotourism