SELF-CATERING HOLIDAY COTTAGE AND HOME OF THE WILD BOAR

ild boar are an omnivorous, gregarious mammal and became extinct in Great Britain and Ireland by the 17th century, but wild breeding populations have recently returned in some areas.

A wild boar searches for food mainly at dawn and dusk, rooting amongst the leaf litter and damp soil of open woodlands with its toughened snout. It has a keen sense of smell and will eat almost anything it comes across, including nuts, berries, carrion, roots, tubers, refuse, insects, small reptiles, even young deer and lambs.

Wild boars like to live near mud wallows in which they will spend many hours. This wallowing is an important routine, helping to remove parasites and protect the sensitive skin from the sun's harmful rays.

Wild boars live in groups called sounders. Sounders typically contain around 20 animals, but groups of over 50 have been seen. In a typical sounder there are two or three sows and their offspring; adult males are not part of the sounder outside of a breeding cycle, two to three per year, and are usually found alone. Birth, called farrowing, usually occurs in a secluded area away from the sounder; a litter will typically contain 8-12 piglets. The animals are usually nocturnal, foraging from dusk until dawn but with resting periods during both night and day.

A den is used for resting and sleeping. A boar often makes a shelter by cutting long grass and crawling under it to lift it so that it becomes entangled with the tall herbage around to form canopies. Wild boars communicate with each other using a wide range of grunts, squeaks and chirrups. They grunt a lot when feeding - a loud grunt is a warning to others.

Boars are the only hoofed animals known to dig burrows, a habit which can be explained by the fact that they are the only known mammals lacking brown adipose tissue which normally enables the storing of energy in the form of fat, also cushioning and insulating the body. Therefore, they need to find other ways to protect themselves from the cold. For the same reason, piglets often shiver to produce heat themselves

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