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A wild boar at the duck pond. The boar's coat colour provides excellent camouflage against the autumnal landscape.
Wild boar coats can be described as brindled and bristly with a thick underlying brown pelage. However, coat colours can vary considerably and this page illustrates typical wild boar coat colours as well as a few anomalies. |
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Stripey (piglet/boarlet)
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Red (juvenile)
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Black (adult)
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Brown (adult)
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Leucistic

An East Sussex leucistic wild boar under anaesthetic after being ear-tagged for research purposes.These leucistic wild boar are found on the Kent/East Sussex border. They are not albino's as they don't have red eyes and posses some dark pigment (melanin) in their coats. The pale coats are a result of a mutation in their coat-colour genes. Because they are part of a relatively small population (i.e. small gene pool), the mutation is expressed more frequently than would be in a larger population. At feeding stations, I observed approximately one in four of the Kent/East Sussex population in one particular study area where 'leucistic'.
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Spotted (Black spots on white coat)
| Very rarely, 'spotty' wild boar occur. They are seen in the wild in continental Europe, but none have been reported free-living wild boar in the UK, to-date. They can be seen in UK wild boar farms, and if they are seen in the wild in the UK, it would probably be assumed they were an escaped domestic variety or domestic pig/wild boar hybrid. The spots are due to a genetic mutation, and are not an inpurity in the blood-line from domestic pig genes. |
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Albino
An albino wild boar photographed in Japan (© unknown).
| Coat colour in hybrid wild boar x domestic pigs, and feral pigs, varies enormously depending on the breed of domestic pig that initially escaped. Coats may be entirely of one colour: black, brown or white are common, or with coloured spots, patches, stripes, saddles and shoulder belts. Feral pigs that are all black or brown in colouration can be distinghuished from wild boar by body shape.Escaped domestic pigs which have bred in the wild for several generations begin to lose their domestic appearance and develop thick bristly coats, and larger head, neck and shoulders. Piglets usually do not possess the characteristic brown and yellow longitudinal stripes of pure wild boar piglets, though there are rare exceptions to this rule. In Britain there are no populations of feral pigs. |
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