Behaviour and Social Structure
Adult males are usually solitary outside of the breeding season, but females and their offspring (both sub-adult males and females) live in groups called sounders. Sounders typically number around 20 animals, although groups of over 50 have been seen, and will consist of 2 to 3 sows; one of which will be the dominant female. Group structure changes with the coming and going of farrowing females, the migration of maturing males (usually when they reach around 20 months) and the arrival of unrelated sexually active males.
Wild boar are situationally crepuscular or nocturnal, foraging in early morning and late afternoon or at night, but resting for periods during both night and day. They are omnivorous scavengers, eating almost anything they come across, including grass, nuts, berries, carrion, nests of ground nesting birds, roots, tubers, refuse, insects and small reptiles. Wild boar in Australia are also known to be predators of young deer and lambs.
If surprised or cornered, a boar (particularly a sow with piglets) can and will defend itself and its young with intense vigour. The male lowers its head, charges, and then slashes upward with its tusks. The female, whose tusks are not visible, charges with head up, mouth wide, and bites.
Read more about this topic: Wild Boar
Famous quotes containing the words behaviour, social and/or structure:
“I look on it as no trifling effort of female strength to withstand the artful and ardent solicitations of a man that is thoroughly master of our hearts. Should we in the conflict come off victorious, it hardly pays us for the pain we suffer from the experiment ... and I still persist in it that such a behaviour in any man I love would rob me of that most pleasing thought, namely, the obligation I have to him for not making such a trial.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“If twins are believed to be less intelligent as a class than single-born children, it is not surprising that many times they are also seen as ripe for social and academic problems in school. No one knows the extent to which these kind of attitudes affect the behavior of multiples in school, and virtually nothing is known from a research point of view about social behavior of twins over the age of six or seven, because this hasn’t been studied either.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)
“A special feature of the structure of our book is the monstrous but perfectly organic part that eavesdropping plays in it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)