PIGS 287 



bles the skull of Phacochoerus delamerei closely, but differs 

 from that species, as do all the africanus group, by the pres- 

 ence of well-developed upper and lower incisors and roofed- 

 over choanae. The skull has a length of 14^^ inches, which 

 is large for an immature female specimen and would indi- 

 cate a larger body size for this race than that of the East 

 African. The tusks are small, owing to the immaturity of 

 the individual, the exposed portion of the tusks being only 

 3>^ inches. The longest Soudan specimen recorded by 

 Ward is one having tusks 11% inches for the same meas- 

 urement. 



Desert Wart-Hog 

 Phacochoerus delamerei 



Native Name: Somali, dofar. 



Phacochoerus delamerei Lonnberg, 1908, Proc. Zool. Soc, p. 940. 



Range. — Low desert or nyika region of the Northern 

 Guaso Nyiro River northward to Somaliland and westward 

 to Lake Rudolf. 



The desert wart-hog has long remained unknown or 

 undescribed, although specimens have for many years been 

 shot by sportsmen to whom the region which they inhabit 

 is well known. In 1908 Lonnberg discovered two skulls 

 at the British Museum, collected by Lord Delamere some- 

 where in the desert region between Somaliland and the 

 Northern Guaso Nyiro of British East Africa, which differed 

 strikingly by the absence of incisor teeth and the shortness 

 or greater breadth of the skull from those of the ordinary or 

 africanus type of wart-hog. In these characters they agreed 

 with csthiopicus, a species confined to the extreme southern 

 point of Africa and now doubtless extinct. We have thus 

 among wart-hogs a peculiar condition of distribution, not 

 duplicated by other game mammals, consisting of two species, 

 closely allied, living at opposite extremes of the range of the 

 genus with the intermediate territory occupied by a dis- 

 tantly related species showing considerably less specializa- 

 tion. The desert wart-hog must be considered one of the 

 most highly specialized wart-hogs, owing to the reduction 

 or loss of its incisors, great breadth of skull, and the enlarged 

 and knobbed character of its warts. The absence of the 



