The wild boar (Sus scrofa), often known as “wild swine,” “common wild pig,” or simply “wild pig,” is a suid that is endemic to much of Eurasia and North Africa, as well as the Americas and Oceania. The species is currently one of the world’s most widely distributed mammals and the most common suiform. Due to its wide range, large numbers, and adaptability to various environments, it has been classified as the least concern on the IUCN Red List. In parts of its imported range, it has become an invasive species. Wild boars are thought to have originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene and expanded throughout the Old World, outcompeting other suid species.

Up to 16 subspecies have been identified as of 1990, and they are classified into four geographical groups based on skull height and lacrimal bone length. The species is found in matriarchal communities, which are made up of interconnected females and their offspring (both male and female). Outside of the mating season, fully developed males are generally alone. Except in the Far East and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where the tiger and the Komodo dragon, respectively, are the wild boar’s major predators, the grey wolf is the wild boar’s main predator in most of its native range. For millennia, the wild boar has had a long relationship with humans, the progenitor of most domestic pig varieties and a big-game animal. Boars have also re-hybridized with feral pigs in recent decades, resulting in a significant pest wild animal in the Americas and Australia.

The English word ‘boar’ comes from the Old English bar, which is considered to be derived from the unknown West Germanic *bairaz. Boar is a term that is occasionally used to refer to male domesticated pigs, particularly breeding males who have not been castrated. Because real wild boars were extinct in Great Britain before the formation of Modern English, the phrases true wild boar and pigs, especially big or semi-wild ones, are frequently interchanged.

‘Sow,’ the traditionally female name, is derived from Old English and Germanic; it derives from Proto-Indo-European and is linked to the Latin sus and the Greek hus and the New High German Sau. Piglets are the name given to the young.

Wild boars are thought to have originated on Southeast Asian islands such as Indonesia and the Philippines and then migrated to continental Eurasia and North Africa, according to MtDNA research. The species’ oldest fossil discoveries date from the Early Pleistocene and occur from both Europe and Asia. S. scrofa had largely displaced the related S. strozzii, a huge, perhaps swamp-adapted suid ancestral to the contemporary S. verrucosus, throughout the Eurasian continent by the late Villafranchian, confining it too insular Asia. The bearded pig of Malacca and the neighboring islands is its closest wild cousin.

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