JoAnn Smeals, age 10 of West Warwick, Rhode Island, for her question:

Where are peccaries found?

Last week, the pig family trotted into Andy's column. The peccaries happen to be the New World cousins of the boars and wild pigs that live in the Old World. The peccaries, however, do not wear toothy tusks like their relatives of the Old World. Instead, they shoo away their foes with strong smells that comes from musk glands near their tails. They are smaller than many of their Old World relatives and they tend to wear thicker coats of bristly hair. Most of them enjoy life in South and Central America and a few range into the southern regions of the United States.

Wild peccaries are tough little trotters who feel at home in thick scrublands on the plains or on gently sloping hillsides. Some of them roam in family herds through cactus country. The white lipped peccary is about three feet long and two feet tall. His bristly coat is black gray and he has white lips. He roams in large herds through Mexico and far south to Paraguay. The musk hog peccary is about the same size. His coat is blackish brown and his lips are dark. He roams in smaller herds through Southern Brazil and Paraguay, Central America and northward into parts of Arizona, Texas and New Mexico.