Today I am going to tell you about my favourite animal, what it is, where it lives, when I first encountered it and why I like it so much. I like lots of animals, so it is difficult to choose just one. However, I think my favourite animal is the Warthog. Warthogs live in Africa, they are a sort of wild pig. They get their name because they have four fleshy bumps on their faces, which look a bit like warts. These are part of the defence mechanism for males when they fight. Some people think warthogs are ugly, but I think they are lovely, they have great character.
I was lucky enough to spend some time volunteering at a property in South Africa. At the property, there were three young warthogs which had been orphaned after their mother was poached – killed for food. The baby warthogs were therefore hand-reared. When they were old enough, they were set free to run around in the wild. However, because they were so used to people they preferred to stay nearby.
These three warthogs were very friendly, intelligent and loved to play. They also like to follow their leader. In the wild, baby warthogs will run after their mothers, these three young hogs used to follow us. They would run after us even if we were in a vehicle or on a horse – once they even tried to follow the landowner when he took off in his helicopter! The pigs (as we started to call them) loved to be scratched and cuddled, they were very affectionate. They were also very nosy, whatever we did, they wanted to be with us!
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