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Thanks to Molly for suggesting andrewsarchus and entelodont, our mean "piggies" we learn about this week!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nAndrewsarchus, "Superb Skull of a Gigantic Beast"\n\nDark Folklore by Mark Norman and Tracey Norman\n\nFurther listening:\n\nThe Folklore Podcast\n\nAndrewsarchus (taken from article linked above):\n\n\n\nAndrewsarchus's skull. I'm not sure who the guy holding it is, but I like to think his name is Andrew:\n\n\n\nEntelodont:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\nI\u2019m getting really backed up on listener suggestions, so over the next few months I plan to cover as many of them as possible. We\u2019ll start with two suggestions by Molly, who wanted to learn about Andrewsarchus and the related Entelodont. We talked about entelodonts briefly back in episode 116, and if you remember that episode, you may remember that entelodonts are sometimes referred to as the terminator pig or the hell pig. So yes, we are going to learn about some mean piggies this week, with a bonus fun mystery piggy at the end.\nAndrewsarchus mongoliensis lived in what is now central Asia about 42 million years ago. It\u2019s only known from a single skull found in 1923 in Inner Mongolia, which is part of China these days. The skull has a long snout and is big and wide, over 2.5 feet long, or 83 cm. It has huge, strong teeth that look ferocious.\nWhen the skull was first found, some paleontologists on the team thought it was from a huge wolf-like carnivore. But others weren\u2019t so sure. They thought it was the skull of a pig relative, and pigs are omnivores. Without more fossil remains, we can\u2019t know for sure what Andrewsarchus\u2019s body looked like, but these days scientists mostly think it was closely related to entelodonts.\nDespite being called the terminator pig, entelodonts weren\u2019t very closely related to pigs, although they and Andrewsarchus are in the order Artiodactyla. That\u2019s the order that includes all even-toed hoofed mammals and their close relations, including pigs, but also including hippos and whales. Hippos and whales are actually pretty closely related, and entelodonts and Andrewsarchus were more closely related to hippos than to pigs.\nDaeodon [DIE-oh-don] was the biggest entelodont known, and it may have stood up to 7 feet tall at the shoulder, or just over 2 meters. It lived in North America, but there was another species from Eurasia, Paraentelodon intermedium, that was probably close to the same size. Both lived about 22 million years ago.\nEntelodonts had big, wide skulls with flared cheekbones and knob-like bony protrusions, so its head may have looked something like a warthog\u2019s head. It also had cloven hooves. We don\u2019t know if Andrewsarchus had hooves since we haven\u2019t found anything but that one huge skull. The larger species of Entelodont had a humped shoulder something like a bison for the attachment of strong neck muscles to support the head\u2019s weight, and Andrewsarchus probably had this too. The rest of the body was much more lightly built, with short, slender legs and a skinny little tail.\nEven though Entelodont teeth are fearsome-looking, and at least some species of Entelodont were probably active hunters, they\u2019re considered omnivores and Andrewsarchus probably was too. In fact, because Andrewsarchus was found on what was once a beach along the ocean, some researchers think it might have used its big forward-pointing front teeth to dig shellfish out of the sand. Most likely it ate pretty much anything it could find or catch, including shellfish, turtles, and other small animals, carrion, and plant material like fruit, nuts, and roots.\nThe teeth of some entelodont species show wear marks that indicate it probably bit through bones pretty frequently, possibly while scavenging already dead animals but possibly also when killing prey. One fossil skull of a herbivorous artiodactyl that lived in North America was found with an entelodont incisor embedded in it.