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b"Thanks to Oceana and Leo for suggesting this week's episode about the javelina! We'll even learn about a mystery peccary too.\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nNew Species of Peccary--Pig-Like Animal--Discovered in Amazon Region\\n\\nA javelina, also called the collared peccary [By Wing-Chi Poon - Own work by uploader; at Cottonwood Campground, Big Bend National Park, Texas, USA, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4394434]:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nThis week we have a suggestion by Oceana and Leo, the javelina! It\\u2019s an animal native to the Americas, also called the collared peccary. We\\u2019re going to learn about it and its close relations, including a mystery animal.\\n\\nThe javelina is in the family Tayassuidae, called the New World pigs. The rest of the world\\u2019s pigs, including the warthog and the babirusa and the domestic pig, belong to the family Suidae. While the two families are related, the ancestors of the New World pigs, or peccaries, split off from the ancestors of other pigs around 40 million years ago and they\\u2019ve been evolving separately for all that time.\\n\\nPeccaries live throughout almost all of Central and South America up to southwestern North America and some of the Caribbean islands. All peccaries look like little hairy pigs, including a flat-ended pig snout that it uses to root in the ground, small eyes, short tusks, slender legs with cloven hooves, and a thin little tail. It\\u2019s relatively small compared to domestic pigs, about the size of a big dog at most, and is covered with a thick coat of bristly hair. When it\\u2019s angry or frightened, it can raise the bristles along its back to make it look larger. It also has scent glands that give off a pungent smell, which is how members of the same herd recognize each other, since peccaries have poor eyesight.\\n\\nPeccaries mostly eat plant material, but they\\u2019re omnivores and will eat meat when they find it, from insects and grubs to frogs and even carrion. Because they root around in the ground and leaf litter, they stir up nutrients in a way that benefits other animals and the environment in general. In the case of the javelina, also called the collared peccary, musk hog, or skunk pig, it\\u2019s sometimes considered a pest since it will root up people\\u2019s flowerbeds and gardens. But the javelina doesn\\u2019t know the difference between a garden and a not-garden. It just wants to find some tasty grubs and roots.\\n\\nPeccaries are social animals that usually live in small herds. The white-lipped peccary is widespread in the forests of Central and South America, and sometimes lives in herds of 300 animals or more, even as many as 2,000 according to some reports. It requires an enormous range as a result, and travels a lot of the day to find new areas to forage. It\\u2019s threatened by habitat loss, mostly deforestation. Like other peccaries, it smells sort of skunky and can be aggressive if threatened. It eats a lot of fruit in addition to other plant material, and because it has stronger jaws than the javelina, it can eat seeds and nuts that the javelina can\\u2019t, so the two species can coexist in the same environment without competing for the same food sources.\\n\\nUntil 1972, the Chacoan peccary was only known from some fossils found in 1930. Not only did scientists think it was extinct, they thought it had been extinct for a long time. But in the early 1970s, rumors about a new peccary species started to circulate. A team of biologists followed up with locals and discovered the peccary living in a small area of South America called Chaco. Surprise! New peccary just dropped.\\n\\nThe Chacoan peccary, also known as the tagua, looks a lot like a javelina although it doesn\\u2019t have a dew claw on its hind feet. It has a tough snout and brown and gray bristles, with white on its shoulders and around its mouth. It lives in small bands of around a dozen individuals that roam across a large range,"