sczlogover.gif (3787 bytes)

peccary.jpg (26894 bytes)

© Sedgwick County Zoo, credit: Bill Chambers

Chacoan Peccaries

Tayassu tajacu

Physical Characteristics

  • The very coarse fur is grizzled black and gray with a white "collar" in front of the shoulders. The small, oblong, cloven hooves have 3 toes in the back. The snout is long and rubbery. Their common name, javelina, comes from their javelin-like teeth. The short, straight canines are razor sharp.
  • Size of average adult
    • height: 20 inches at the shoulder
    • length: 36 inches
    • weight: 40 - 60 pounds
  • Approximate life span is 8 - 10 years.

Diet

  • Wild: prickly pear cactus, tubers, bulbs and small animals

Behavior

  • Travel in herds or 6 - 30, grunting softly for contact while feeding
  • Active during cool evenings and early morning, rest under bushes or boulders during the heat of the day
  • Feet are well adapted for running
  • Alarm call is a barking cough, can also squeal, but only will if terrified or injured
  • Have a powerful musk gland on the top of the rump
  • Reproduction
    • breeding season: throughout the year
    • gestation: 145 days
    • female dens in hollow log or hollow in the ground, the 1 -2 young can travel with the herd one day after birth

Environmental/Global

  • Habitat: deserts and brushland
  • Distribution: southwestern United States and Mexico

Exhibited in: Australia/South America Exhibit
  Click here to visit the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). Click here to visit Sedgwick County, Kansas. COPYRIGHT 2004 Sedgwick County Zoo all rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording means or otherwise without prior written permission of the photographer or author. Unless marked otherwise, materials are from the Sedgwick County Zoo. Sedgwick County Zoo is accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA).