They look like pigs, smell like pigs, and guess what--they're a kind of wild pig. White-lipped peccaries are a medium to large native pig species found in Central and South America. Like other pigs, they eat a wide variety of foods, inculding seeds, roots, bird eggs, lizards, and anything else they can catch.
In the rainforest, several animals are "indicators" of the health of the rainforest. Only a healthy rainforest will support key species like Tapirs and Jaguars. However, no species is more indicative of a rainforest's health than the White-lipped Peccary. This is because White-lipped Peccaries like to be in large groups that require large areas of rainforest.
When local people living in and around the tropical rainforest talk about animals, the White-lipped Peccary is always one of the first that they mention. They live in rainforests from the south of Mexico all the way to Ecuador. People really like to eat wary, which is one reason they are so well-known, but they are truly unforgettable animals. For instance, wary usually walk in big groups of 10-100. Some scientists say that the biggest wary groups probably have more than 2,000 members. If this were not interesting enough, as they walk about in huge groups, they clack their teeth together and grunt back and forth to communicate. Imagine bumping into a giant mob of grunting, clacking wild pigs in the forest!
Another important way the wary talk to each other is by using their scent to mark their territory. These territories are usually very, very large – even bigger than the amount of land that a tiger walks. Speaking of tigers, they love to eat wary, though some say an angry drove of wary is strong enough to kill even a big tiger if he’s not careful. Hunters have to be careful too; there are many stories about huntermen having to climb tall trees to escape upset groups of wary. Despite this, these critters hardly eat meat and prefer a variety of fruits, insects, mushrooms, and plants. Many people claim they also like to eat snakes. Although the big wary groups might make them seem common, they need lots of forest to survive; and every day there is less and less tropical forest, and less and less wary.
All of the photos on this page were taken using remote "camera traps" that are mounted on a tree and take a photo when the animal passes by. We use these in our research to understand the presence of rare wildlife on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua.