Animal · Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia
Warthog
Phacochoerus africanus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The warthog is a wild African pig with a broad flat face, four curved tusks and thick pads of skin on its cheeks that look like warts. It grazes on short grass, often kneeling down on its padded wrists to reach it. When it runs, its thin tail stands straight up like a flag.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the warthog live?
Home: Grassland, open woodland and savannah across sub-Saharan Africa.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, the Senegal, Ghana.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: about 65 to 85 cm tall at the shoulder. It weighs about 70 kilograms. On the menu: both plants and meat.
The story behind it
A warthog sleeps in a hole in the ground, and it almost always backs in, rear first, so that its tusks face the entrance. Most of those holes were dug by aardvarks; the warthog simply borrows them. The piglets go in first and the mother last, so she can block the doorway with her body. Warthogs mostly graze on short grass, and in the dry season they dig up roots and bulbs with the hard edge of the snout. The two upper tusks grow long and curved, and the shorter lower pair stays razor-sharp by rubbing against them. The warty pads on the face are not warts at all but padding that protects the head when males shove each other. A warthog can run at about 48 km/h, usually fast enough to reach a burrow before a lion catches up. Families are led by a female, and several mothers sometimes share one den with all their piglets.
Find it on the globe
Warthog is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Why does a warthog back into its burrow?
Going in backwards keeps the tusks pointing at the doorway, so anything that follows meets the sharp end first. It also means the warthog can burst straight out at full speed.
Are the warts real warts?
No. They are tough pads of skin and gristle that work like the padding in a helmet when two males shove each other head to head. Males grow much bigger ones than females.
Why does it kneel down to eat?
Its legs are long and its neck is short, so the ground is awkward to reach. It folds the front legs under and rests on hard calloused wrists, which are padded from the day it is born.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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