It is the smallest and rarest species of wild pig in the world. It is one of the very few mammals that build its own home, or nest, complete with a ‘roof’. It is an indicator species as its presence reflects the health of its primary habitat, tall and wet grasslands. The smallest member of the pig family, the pygmy hog (porcula salvania), is a critically endangered species. Once found along a narrow strip of tall and wet grassland plains on the Himalayan foothills – from Uttar Pradesh to Assam, through Nepal’s terai areas and Bengal’s duars – it was thought to have become extinct in the 1960s. But in 1971 it was “re-discovered” with a small population in the Barnadi Wildlife Sanctuary. astern India where pygmy hogs had been reported or suspected to occur in the past. These surveys confirmed the extinction of the species in Barnadi, where the species was last recorded definitively in 1991, and all other sites except Manas Nati nal Park which now supports the last known viable wild population of this species. By 1993, Manon de Visser and colleagues introduce the rarest and smallest wild pig species, the pygmy hog (Porcula salvania).
