Show us your bushpigs and giant forest hogs...

[Game Warden]

Please include when and where taken, tech specs and any other pertinent information.

 

I'll get the ball rolling:

 

Taken during a night drive in iSimangaliso, using borrowed kit, @@Bugs can fill you in on the tech specs as I was using his kit.

 

Come on, show us your Potamochoerus larvatus...

[Geoff]

@@Game Warden

 

Isn't the information in the EXIF data?

 

Nice work. I've never seen one.

[KafueTyrone]

Taken on foot in the 'Eden' area close to Musekese Camp in the Kafue National Parkl. We stalked this particular group who are almost always available to be photographed and very often active throughout the daylight hours.

[Peter Connan]

@@Game Warden

 

I've never seen one.

Me neither.

 

Well done guys.

[Patty]

I've never seen one in the wild. This was a patient at a vet clinic in northern Tanzania.

 

[kittykat23uk]

Not a bush pig, this is not an African pig. This is a bearded pig from Borneo.

P3223494 adj Bearded Pigs & Monitor Lizard by Jo Dale, on Flickr

[Game Warden]

Let's see some more bush pigs and giant forest hogs: @@Peter Connan and @@PHALANX don't you have images to add?

[PHALANX]

This is all I have. Remnants of moving house. All my Bush pig sightings were at night, no camera handy. Sorry.

[Patty]

I've had a few giant forest hog sightings in the Aberdares but not many photos to show for it. The first time I saw one I thought it was a small buffalo from afar

 

[Ben mosquito]

@@Game Warden, your wish is my command .

 

 

From the magnificent Aberdare NP, a familly in the misty morning

 

 

 

 

a loner in the ...sun

 

 

 

[Game Warden]

Fantastic additions...

[wilddog]

Bush Pigs Gono re Zhou Zimbabwe September 2015. Long distance with overcast weather.

 

 

[PHALANX]

Great shots. AJ

[michael-ibk]

From the Aberdares. Giant Forest Hogs are a pretty safe bet there if you actively search for them in the Salient.

 

.

[Game Warden]

Giant forest hogs are climbing my sightings wishlist after seeing these photos...

[inyathi]

Until relatively recently the bushpig and the red river hog were considered conspecific, however, it’s now generally accepted that they are in fact two distinct species Potamochoerus larvatus and P. porcus. The bushpig occurs almost entirely within Eastern and Southern Africa, from Ethiopia south to the Cape, but does also occur in South Sudan and across southern Central Africa, in the south of the DRC and in Angola, there are also introduced populations in Madagascar and the Comoros. The red river hog is almost entirely a rainforest species, found throughout the Congo Basin and west through the Upper Guinea rainforests as far as Senegal. In a very few places red river hogs may occur in dry woodland and savannah woodland but the species has really not spread at all far from the rainforest. Within the Guinean/ Sudano-Sahelian savannahs, there is habitat that appears very similar to that in which elsewhere in the East or South, you would expect to find bushpigs, yet red river hogs are curiously entirely absent from these areas. In the south of the DRC there is an area of overlap between the two species and it's likely that some hybridisation occurs in this region.

 

Bushpig map

 

Red river hog map

 

Gabon and Congo (Brazzaville) and C.A.R. are probably the best places to try and see red river hogs or perhaps the DRC on a recent BirdQuest expedition to the DRC, they had good views of some red river hogs. Fortunately these pigs are able to breed very rapidly producing plenty of piglets as they are one of the most popular species targeted by bushmeat poachers, in the Congo Basin region, although their numbers have declined in some areas, they are not as badly affected as other species. At least where there is still plenty of good habitat for them, in West Africa red river hogs are quite rare, due to loss of habitat and are now almost entirely confined to protected areas.

 

The following photos of P. porcus were taken in Loango National Park in Gabon in 2008; the habitat in much of Loango is what is known as forest savannah mosaic, a patchwork of strips and islands of rainforest and open savannah grassland. Animals often emerge from the rainforest, coming out in to the grasslands, in the cooler mornings and evenings, to find food or simply to cross from one patch of forest to another. We were lucky to see this sounder of hogs out in the open, while on a late afternoon game drive through the savannah at Tassi.

 

 

 

 

Red river hogs in Loango National Park in Gabon by inyathi, on Flickr

 

Gabon and Sao Tome & Principe 2008

Edited February 25 by inyathi