Bornean Bearded Pig and Eurasian Wild Boar.

1/26/2015.

These are, indeed, Bornean bearded pigs, yes

@Kudu21 How on earth did they possibly get these? Are they the last vestiges of a former breeding population, or are these more recent imports. I have recently been reading a bit about the private collection in Cornwall and now about this place and I cant quite piece it together in my mind how these private individuals can legally get their hands on highly endangered species such as Bearded Pigs and in the formers case Grandidier's vontsira. Major zoos struggle to import hardly anything these days and yet they can??

@DelacoursLangur These bearded pigs are either stock directly phased out of another collection or are descended from stock phased out of other collections; they are by no means recent imports. The fact that they are highly endangered really doesn't mean anything-- hoofstock of various sorts and conservation statuses are popular and around in good numbers in the private sector in the United States-- I mean, just look at the number of scimitar-horned and Arabian oryx, eastern bongo, addra gazelle, etc, etc, etc. on Texas ranches alone. It is no secret that large hoofstock collections have fallen out of favor in public collections, and many species present even five to ten years ago have been phased out (Bornean bearded pigs included) due to lack of interest and small populations/founder bases. Where there is a lack of interest in public collections, there is a much higher interest in the public sector, and that's where many of these animals end up. Whether these pigs specifically came directly from a collection or an animal dealer/private facility is unknown to me. I also won't pretend to know anything about the import of Malagasy carnivores into Europe-- I'm sure there are European ZooChatters that are more knowledgable better able to to speak on that.

@Kudu21 That makes sense, I am aware of the large populations of endangered hoofstock in private hands I just didn't know that included any Bearded Pigs... I was under the impression that the total captive population outside of their range consists at this point of only a few elderly individuals at Berlin and possible Glady Porter in Texas. It is very tragic how neglected the populations of hoofstock have become in public zoos. I hope that private institutions can pick up some of that slack, although my concern is that they will mismanage bloodlines without some sort of studbook.