page_title: Wild boar
section_title: Predators
hierarchical_section_title: Wild boar / Ecology / Predators
caption_attribution_description: English: Tigers killing wild boar in Kanha Tiger Reserve.
context_page_description: The wild boar, also known as the "wild swine", "common wild pig", or simply "wild pig", is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is now one of the widest-ranging mammals in the world, as well as the most widespread suiform. It has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its wide range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats. It has become an invasive species in part of its introduced range. Wild boars probably originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene and outcompeted other suid species as they spread throughout the Old World.
  As of 1990, up to 16 subspecies are recognized, which are divided into four regional groupings based on skull height and lacrimal bone length. The species lives in matriarchal societies consisting of interrelated females and their young. Fully grown males are usually solitary outside the breeding season. The grey wolf is the wild boar's main predator in most of its natural range except in the Far East and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where it is replaced by the tiger and Komodo dragon respectively.
context_section_description: Piglets are vulnerable to attack from medium-sized felids like Eurasian lynx, jungle cats and snow leopards and other carnivorans like brown bears and yellow-throated martens.
  The grey wolf is the main predator of wild boar throughout most of its range. A single wolf can kill around 50 to 80 boars of differing ages in one year. In Italy and Belarus' Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, boars are the wolf's primary prey, despite an abundance of alternative, less powerful ungulates. Wolves are particularly threatening during the winter, when deep snow impedes the boars' movements. In the Baltic regions, heavy snowfall can allow wolves to eliminate boars from an area almost completely. Wolves primarily target piglets and subadults and only rarely attack adult sows. Adult males are usually avoided entirely. Dholes may also prey on boars, to the point of keeping their numbers down in northwestern Bhutan, despite there being many more cattle in the area.
  Leopards are predators of wild boar in the Caucasus (particularly Transcaucasia), the Russian Far East, India, China and Iran. In most areas, boars constitute only a small part of the leopard's diet. However, in Iran's Sarigol National Park, boars are the second most frequently targeted prey species after mouflon, though adult individuals are generally avoided, as they are above the leopard's preferred weight range of 10–40 kg (22–88 lb). This dependence on wild boar is largely due in part to the local leopard subspecies' large size.
  Boars of all ages were once the primary prey of tigers in Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan, Middle Asia and the Far East up until the late 19th century. In modern times, tiger numbers are too low to have a limiting effect on boar populations. A single tiger can systematically destroy an entire sounder by preying on its members one by one, before moving on to another sounder. Tigers have been noted to chase boars for longer distances than with other prey. In two rare cases, boars were reported to gore a small tiger and a tigress to death in self-defense. In the Amur region, wild boars are one of the two most important prey species for tigers alongside the Manchurian wapiti, with the two species collectively comprising roughly 80% of the felid's prey. In Sikhote Alin, a tiger can kill 30–34 boars a year. Studies of tigers in India indicate that boars are usually secondary in preference to various cervids and bovids, though when boars are targeted, healthy adults are caught more frequently than young and sick specimens.
  On the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Flores, the boar's main predator is the Komodo dragon.
caption: Tigers killing a wild boar in Kanha Tiger Reserve
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