Boar

A Boar is a male pig gone wild. Adult females are known as sows. The name also applies to the wild boar that originated in Europe and formerly ranged the entire continent, northern Africa, and western Asia. The European wild boar is a different color, grayish-black and about 1.2 m (about 4 ft) long and 91 cm (36 in) high at the shoulder, with short, woolly hair interspersed with bristles forming a mane along the spine. The lower teeth grow into formidable tusks, which turn up and are sometimes 30 cm (12 in) long.

The tusks are used for defense and digging. The boar usually inhabits marshy forestland, feeding largely on roots and grain, although occasionally it kills and eats small animals. Boars travel in small groups. Size and body variation in boars is probably due to interbreeding between wild boars and domestic stock that have escaped and become wild. Wild boars have been introduced to 20 states in the United States.

Boar hunting was formerly a popular sport throughout Europe, but is now confined chiefly to central and eastern Europe, the only part of the continent where the animal is still abundant. In India a wild boar, larger than its European counterpart, is hunted by people on horseback with lances in the sport called pigsticking. Scientific classification: The wild boar belongs to the family Suidae