Description
Origin : Germany
Trophy with Teeth or Tusks Wild Boar Sus scrofa Mammalia Arctiodactyla Cervidae, diameter wooden Shield cm 13, external curvature of tusks cm 12 and cm 5.5, only a piece, as in photo.
Family: Suidae.
wild boar loose teeth and mandible at this link.
The common boar (Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758) is an even-toed mammal of the suidae family.
Adult specimens measure up to 180 cm in length, with a height at the withers of almost one meter and a maximum weight of approximately one quintal.
The boar has a massive build, with a square body and rather short and thin legs. Each foot has four hooves.
The head, large and massive, is equipped with a long conical snout that ends in a cartilaginous snout (or griffin) resting on a muscular disk, which ensures great mobility and precision. Thanks to the rich innervation, the boar's snout also has great tactile and olfactory sensitivity.
The boar's dentition is made up of 44 teeth, which reveal opportunistic eating habits: twelve incisors, four canines, sixteen premolars and twelve molars. Incisors and premolars tend to fall out with age, while molars are permanent; these have a flattened shape and are used to crush food.
However, the canines, often also called tusks, are the main characteristic of the wild boar. These are continuously growing teeth, present in both sexes, but only in the male are they large enough to protrude from the mouth. The lower canines, called defenses, are larger than the upper ones, called coti. Deeply embedded in the jaw, they can reach (in the male) even 30 cm in length, while lengths between 15 and 20 cm are considered normal, of which less than half protrude from the mouth; the lower canines grow with an upward curve of 180°, interfering with the upper canines and keeping them always sharp. Excessively long fangs are disadvantageous: by curving backwards they become useless as an offensive weapon. The tusks have a dual function: they are in fact used both as work tools, for example for digging in the ground, and as defense or offense tools, to defend oneself from predators or to compete with other specimens during the mating period.
The skin is very thick and poorly vascularized, often with the presence of subcutaneous fat pads; it is a real armour, which makes the animal immune to insect bites and thorny undergrowth plants, and protects it from viper bites (unless they are placed in crucial points, such as the snout). The skin is almost completely covered with stiff bristles, mixed with a finer and softer woolly undercoat, which thermally insulates the body. On the forehead and shoulders the coat forms a sort of mane, more evident in some subspecies: when the animal is irritated or scared, it raises its mane, which makes it look even bigger and more massive than it actually is.
Wild boars are social animals, living in groups of around twenty adult females with their cubs, led by the eldest sow.
Wild boars are known for their aggressive temperament: if caught off guard or cornered, in fact, these animals, even if injured or debilitated, attack without thinking twice, fighting strenuously and proving very dangerous. The different shape of the tusks in the two sexes also causes a different reaction in the face of danger: while the male charges with his head down, and then slashes upwards and laterally, in order to disembowel the attacker, the female throws herself at the enemy keeping its mouth open and biting him repeatedly, often raging on his body even after knocking him down.
These are animals with an omnivorous and very varied diet. Although it feeds mainly on vegetal material, such as acorns (in periods in which these are particularly abundant, the wild boar eats practically nothing else), fruits, berries, tubers, roots and mushrooms, the wild boar does not disdain to supplement its diet from time to time with material of animal origin, such as insects and other invertebrates, eggs and sometimes even meat and fish, coming mainly from carcasses dug up or found near water.
Occasionally, wild boars hunt actively, choosing small animals such as frogs, lizards and snakes, but also prey of a certain size, such as deer and lambs. Their very fine sense of smell allows them to smell food even if it is underground.
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