Yesterday was the first time I used the North Sulawesi babirusa in a zoo of mine.
The animal is beautiful, but there’s one notable flaw: it keeps the digging animations from the warthog, and does them constantly.
The Zoopedia literally states that they are lack the ability to dig like other suids (“Babirusas are missing a bone in the snout that other pigs have, so they do not engage in ‘rooting’ behaviour typical of pigs.”), and after personal research, it appears that they are only capable of doing so in mud and swampy ground. Not on “normal” soil like most pigs do.
It’s fairly strange for me to say it, but in this case, the animal having that additional animation actually takes away from its realism.
The animal is beautiful, but there’s one notable flaw: it keeps the digging animations from the warthog, and does them constantly.
The Zoopedia literally states that they are lack the ability to dig like other suids (“Babirusas are missing a bone in the snout that other pigs have, so they do not engage in ‘rooting’ behaviour typical of pigs.”), and after personal research, it appears that they are only capable of doing so in mud and swampy ground. Not on “normal” soil like most pigs do.
It’s fairly strange for me to say it, but in this case, the animal having that additional animation actually takes away from its realism.