Warthog; The Deadly Prey for giant African Predators

A mother warthog with her juvenile feeding on short grasses.

Travel is always exciting and we get to learn of new aspects from the rest of the world outside our own. Take an adventure safari with me right now wherever you are and we explore African wilderness. With us; Warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) (not necessarily beautiful!) is a wildlife species of the pig family that inhabits African open and forest grasslands. Each individual has two sensitive pronounced warts on each side of their face from which they got the name and that differentiates them from other hog species.  Warthogs have scaring tusks on their snouts that are used for digging ground for bulbs, tubers and roots for feeding on as well as dangerous tools of defense in attack.

Warthogs can withstand hard weather conditions with almost bare hard skins (save for mane on the nape of the neck) that retain warmth in cold conditions as well as resist acute humid temperatures. In the heat of the day they wallow in shallow water sources to cool off the heat as well as spreading mud on their body to insulate their bodies when away from water sources.

On physical safari into Rwanda and Africa south of Sahara in general you will encounter warthogs in small groups called sounders feeding on short grasses on bent front knees, ever alert of surprise attack from predators. Warthogs have very accurate senses of smell and hearing and very poor eyesight. Under threat, warthogs bolt away at speed of 30 miles per hour with adult males in the lead to clear the way and offer safe passage to the juveniles and infants follow with tails raised as a sign of threat detection and follow up mechanism.

A hungry hyena facing the wrath of a threatened warthog

In times of real predator attack when running away seems a wrong option warthogs use all their might and face off with the threat using very sharp tusks on their snout and in most cases even the most dangerous predators (lions and leopards) find an encounter with warthogs one of the hardest challenges to be undertaken when solitary if at all they survive the particular encounters.