Desert warthog

The desert warthog (Phacochoerus aethiopicus) is a species of even-toed ungulate in the pig family (Suidae), found in northern Kenya and Somalia, and possibly Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. This is the range of the extant subspecies, commonly known as the Somali warthog (P. a. delamerei). Another subspecies, commonly known as the Cape warthog (P. a. aethiopicus), became extinct around 1865, but formerly occurred in South Africa.

Evolutionary history

Fossils have been found from the Holocene epoch showing that two divergent lines of warthogs (Phacochoerus spp.) were in existence thousands of years ago. The ancestors of the present day common warthog (P. africanus) had a different number of incisors than the ancestral desert warthog (P. aethiopicus) line. During the late nineteenth century, P. aethiopicus became extinct in South Africa. Subsequently, study of mDNA as well as morphological analysis has shown that the East African population of warthogs, previously thought to be a variant of the common warthog, are in fact surviving members of the putatively extinct P. aethiopicus.