Digging the Zoo
by Alex Hawes
Along
one side of the National Zoo's Small Mammal House, you can
find a small slice of the Southwest wallowing here in Washington.
Three javelinas (or collared peccaries)—one eight-year-old
male and two four-year-old sibling females—call the Zoo home.
On exhibit with them grow cacti, evocative of the arid southwestern
U.S., where javelinas today can be found. Peccaries feed on
cacti in the wild, yet the Zoo's javelinas so far have left
the prickly plants alone. Instead, they pig out on alfalfa
hay, carrots, special "pig grower" pellets, and
the occasional treat of an apple or other fruit or vegetable
delicacy.
A depression in the ground of the Zoo's javelina exhibit creates a natural pool when filled with rainwater, where these peccaries can wallow away sunny summer days. If it gets too cold, or too hot, they may take refuge inside a small enclosure, but nicer weather brings them scurrying outside. Their outdoor exhibit has been designed to allow the javelinas to root around in the dirt, as they do in the wild when foraging for underground tubers. Keepers have had to add sand and gravel to fulfill the javelinas' digging desires. While wallowing in mud and playing in the sand may make for a mellow mammal, javelinas can potentially be aggressive, and dangerous considering their long, sharp canines. For this reason, keepers at the Zoo do not go into the exhibit with them.
The Zoo's javelinas live here amid plantings of black willow, Indian tobacco, arrowhead, and pokeweed, and beneath a large beech tree. These plants, part of the American Indian Heritage Garden, exemplify native Americans' discoveries of innovative uses for the surrounding flora and fauna. The peccary too has been a part of certain American Indians' heritage and diet. Despite being easily spooked and quite aggressive when threatened, the three species of peccary have been hunted by native American groups from Argentina to Arizona. However, having migrated north from Mexico only within the last 300 years, the javelina is relatively recent quarry for the inhabitants of the southwestern U.S. As a testament to this fact, no separate word for javelina exists in the languages of the Pima and Tohono O'odham Indians of southern Arizona.
(ZooGoer 25(3) 1996. Copyright 1996 Alex Hawes. All rights reserved.)
