3-000-238 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Babirussa, recently added to the Zoological Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, [London], 1860. 'The babirussa of the Island of Celebes (Sus babirussa, or Babirussa alfurus of Systematists) is one of the most peculiar and certainly one of the most rare of this group of quadrupeds...The present example [of the Suidae or swine family]...is a fine young male, and exhibits only partially the curious structure of the tufts for which the adult male is so celebrated, and which must render him so formidable an opponent in the forest. These tusks grow upwards instead of downwards from the upper jaw, from a sheath which pierces the lip, and in the fully-grown male recurve backwards until they nearly meet the sides of the face again. The whole contour of the animal is likewise very peculiar, and different from that of the ordinary pigs. The babirussa is said to be found wild in the neighbouring islands of Borneo and some others of the Sunda group, as well as in Celebes. It attained its name from the extraordinary idea of the Malays that it originated from a cross between the pig (Baba) and the deer (Russa, or Rusa)...we believe that the example in our Zoological Society's Gardens is unique in Europe'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.