PIGS 275 



Abyssinian Bush Pig 

 Potamochcerus koiropotamus hassama 



Native Names: Abyssinian, assame ; Argo, askarmar. 



Nyctochcerus hassama Heuglin, 1863, Nov. Act. Leop. XXX, pt. 2, p. 7. 



Range. — Abyssinian highlands southward through the 

 Lake Rudolf basin to the Northern Guaso Nyiro River in 

 British East Africa, and in the Nile Valley southward 

 through the Bahr-el-Ghazal drainage area. 



Riippell was the first naturalist to mention the Abys- 

 sinian bush pig, which some years later was described and 

 named by Heuglin, who applied to it the native Abyssinian 

 name of hassama. He gave the habitat of his new pig as 

 the highlands generally, but later in his "Reise in das Ge- 

 biet des Weissen Nil" gave the particular locality of the 

 species as the Hawash Valley. Major, in his monograph, 

 has figured the skull of Heuglin's specimen and called at- 

 tention to the real characters of the race, the chief of which 

 is the shortness of the bony process projecting above the upper 

 canine. In the Abyssinian race this process reaches only half- 

 way to the level of the nasal bones, having only one-half the 

 development found in the other races. This lesser develop- 

 ment of the structure, which separates the genus from Sus, 

 seems to point to the intermediate or less specialized char- 

 acter of the most northern race and the one geographically 

 nearest Sus. There is also a difference in the coloration in 

 the northern race, which in the adult boar shows white 

 only on the head and the dorsal mane, the sides of the 

 body, the under-parts, and the legs being quite black. 

 The female and immature animals are quite rufous-red 

 on the sides, and strikingly different in color from the old 

 boars. 



Only a single specimen of this pig has been available 

 for examination. This one is an old boar collected by the 

 Rainey expedition on Lololokui, a table-topped mountain 

 situated north of the Northern Guaso Nyiro River. The 

 skull of this specimen shows the short character of the bony 

 process above the canine well, and is in general shape quite 

 identical to the figures of Heuglin's specimen. The flesh 



