Behavior
The species is omnivorous, eating mainly roots and tubers, and supplements its diet with fruit, grasses, herbs, eggs, dead animal and plant remains, insects, and lizards. It uses its large muzzle to root about in the soil in search of food, which can cause much damage to agricultural plantings.
Red river hogs are mostly nocturnal; by day, they hide in dense brush; after sunset, they roam in troops searching for food. They are good swimmers, but are unable to hold their breath for long. They live in small troops of approximately four to twenty animals, composed of a male (boar), some adult females (sows) and their piglets. The boar defends its harem aggressively against carnivores; the leopard being its most important enemy. Different troops may merge occasionally to form groups of up to sixty animals.
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Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“In abnormal times like our own, when institutions are changing rapidly in several directions at once and the traditional framework of society has broken down, it becomes more and more difficult to measure any type of behavior against any other.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Children can’t make their own rules and no child is happy without them. The great need of the young is for authority that protects them against the consequences of their own primitive passions and their lack of experience, that provides with guides for everyday behavior and that builds some solid ground they can stand on for the future.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)