THE GIANT FOREST PIG 



By Frederic A. Lucas 



AFRICA is not only preeminently the land of mammals; it is the 

 home of many large and curious beasts. Something like 2400 years 

 ago Hanno, the Carthaginian, sailing southward along the coast of 

 Africa, encountered some "wild men" which he slew and flayed, and on his 

 return, deposited their skins in the Temple of Astarte.' 



This was the first and one of the most remarkable of animals to be 

 brought from Africa but since that time there has been brought out many 

 another strange beast, the most notable, the okapi, and one of the latest, the 

 pigmy elephant, now in the New York Zoological Park. It is quite proliable 

 that still others remain to be (Hscovered, although with the rapid opening 

 up of the country and its exploration by sportsmen and ivory hunters, it 

 would seem that the possibilities must ere long be exhausted. 



For something like fifteen years it was suspected that the forests of 

 Central Africa harbored some giant member of the hog family, but owing to 

 the retiring habits of the animal, it was not until 1904 that a specimen fell 

 into the hands of a naturalist and that the creature was properly introduced 

 to the scientific world. Had the animal known that it was to be christened 

 Hi/lochoprus meincrfzhagcni, it probably would have remained hidden for an- 

 other fifteen years. The specimens placed on exhibition were taken by Mr. 

 Alfred J. Klein near the Channa River, and were mounted by Mr. F. Blaschke. 



The forest pig is most nearly related to the well-known wart hog, which 

 it exceeds in size if not in ugliness. Like the wart hog, the head of the forest 

 pig is long, the upturned tusks heavy, the snout unusually broad and there 

 are callosities just below the eyes. The body is deep and heavy, the legs 

 slender, so that the animal is at once quick and powerful. 



Very little is really known about the forest pig, partly on account of its 

 habits, which like those of most pigs are nocturnal, partly because its chosen 

 home is in the tall grass of the African jungle. The hunter forces his way 

 through the bamboos and underbrush, up to his eyes in the grass — there 

 is a grunt, a rush, and the game is far away without having even been seen. 

 On the slopes of Mount Kenia at an elevation of six thousand feet, where 

 the bamboo jungle meets the forest, Mr. Carl E. Akeley found evidences of 

 the presence of numbers of these pigs, their tracks following the elephant 

 trails for long distances, and here and there were patches of upturned 

 ground. Most curious of all were regular haycocks, two and three feet 

 high, eight and ten feet in diameter, evidently piled up by this animal. 

 What was the object howe\er of these piles of fresh grass, Mr. Akeley 

 does not venture to say. 



' Kiplinfi lias used this incident as the ba.sis of one of the adventures of the " Knights of 

 tlie Joyous Venture." It has been suggested that the animals taken by Hanno were only 

 baboons, but this suggestion came from a disappointed gorilla hunter, and we prefer to think 

 of them as gorillas, the more, that Hanno was well acquainted with baboons. 243 



