Recent conservation measures have improved the prospects of survival in the wild of this critically endangered species. The pygmy hog constitutes the top priority for conservation amongst all Suiformes (Oliver and Deb Roy 1993).

The pygmy hog is a critically endangered suid, previously spread across Bhutan, India and Nepal, but now only found in India . “When it comes to reintroduction, we have to go for a soft release as we cannot introduce them directly from the breeding centre,” Deka adds. it is the male and female that make the nest. The current world population is about 150 individuals or fewer. Pygmy hog - Nest - These are the only pigs in the world which build a nest. Ecology and Behavior . tall. They roost in the nest and during the heat of the day, take shelter in them too if there is only a male then it may be harder to build a bigger nest. Females build a nest out of thatch in which to give birth, and the infants remain hidden within for about one week. The Pygmy Hog is the smallest of the pig family, attaining hardly 1 foot(30 cm) in height and two feet in length (60-70 cm).

I'm battling through the tall, sharp grass in full sun, whilst looking for pygmy hog nests and hoping tigers were not too close.

It used to be found in a narrow strip of tall and wet grassland plains in the area south of the Himalayan foothills from Uttar Pradesh to Assam, through the Nepal Terai and the Bengal Dooars. The pygmy hog is one of the very few mammals that build its own home, or nest, complete with a ‘roof’, but maybe more important than its own attributes, is the fact that it is an indicator species.

An adult pygmy hog has dark brown to black skin, overlaid by a coat of dark fur. With only one small population of pygmy hogs persisting in the wild in the Manas Wildlife Sanctuary and a captive-breeding programme successfully producing large numbers of hogs, it was clear that the next steps for the PHCP was a trial release of captive-bred hogs into a new site. Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme. To give you an idea of the grassland habitat of the pygmy hog I'm sharing a 40 sec video of me a couple of years ago. Male is bigger in size than the female. It is 55 to 71 cm. Unfortunately due to lack of substantial conservation efforts out of five only one population was left. The Pygmy Hog is the smallest and rarest wild suid in the world. In 1961 pygmy hogs were thought to be extinct, but they were accidently rediscovered in 1971 in Assam in a local tea market. The pygmy hog is apparently non-territorial.