Size: Body length; 75-140 cm. Height; 44-60 cm. Weight; 25-40 kg

Habitat and Distribution: White-lipped Peccary are found in Central and South America from southern Mexico through to southern Brazil and northern Argentina. They are found in a variety of habitats from desert scrub and dry woodland through to rainforest and caves although nearly always close to water.

Age: Up to 13 years.

Groups and Breeding: This species tends to live in large herds of both males and females where the females are dominant. They are active throughout the day and night.
White-lipped Peccaries breed all year round with peaks at spring and autumn. They have a gestation of around 160 days after which females usually give birth to twins or triplets but may have as few as one baby or as many as four. Young can run after an hour and accompany their mothers within a day.

Diet: They have specialised teeth which allow them to eat a wide range of food including fruit (which makes up the majority of their diet), leaves, roots, seeds, mushrooms, worms and insects. Occasionally they may also eat small vertebrates such as frogs, snakes, lizards and bird eggs.

• Peccaries have scent glands on their back and hind quarters. These are used to identify individuals with a group. They have a reciprocal grooming ritual which consists of one peccary rubbing its head against the hindquarters and scent glands of another, and in this way they form a group scent!
• Peccary herds can get as large as 2000 individuals but are usually between 40-300.
• Large groups communicate with a wide range of sounds from grunting through to screaming and teeth-clattering. They can be heard several hundred metres away.
• Peccaries have four toes on their front feet but only three on their hind feet. All toes are hooved but the front toes are larger and used for weight bearing whereas the rear are used only on soft ground for stability.
• Although the peccary can have a home range of up to 200km, it will never travel far from the place that it was born and will continue to visit the same areas and mud wallows throughout its life.
• When excited or angry they have hairs on their upper back that are up to 12 cm long which they can raise, much like a dog, to make them appear bigger.
• Peccaries are a favourite food item of jaguars and pumas, however, they have large canines and can fight ferociously. This means that jaguars only tend to take lone individuals or stragglers from the herd.
• Pecari is a Cariban name for peccaries meaning "an animal which makes many paths through the woods".