Peccaries are primarily herbivores that feed on cactus, fruits, roots, and seeds, with cactus making up the largest share of their diet in dry habitats. All three species will occasionally eat small amounts of animal matter, but plant material accounts for well over 99% of what they consume. What they eat shifts dramatically depending on the species and where they live, from the cactus-heavy deserts of Arizona to the fruit-rich rainforests of South America.
What Collared Peccaries Eat
Collared peccaries (commonly called javelinas in the southwestern United States) are the most widespread species, found from Arizona down through Central and South America. In dry habitats, their diet revolves around cactus. A study of collared peccaries on South Texas rangelands found that cactus made up between 32% and 82% of their diet depending on the specific location, with prickly pear being the dominant species consumed. The rest of their intake was split among woody plants, forbs (broad-leafed herbs), and grasses.
In desert environments, javelinas eat both the pads and fruits of prickly pear cactus, along with mesquite beans, agave, shrub leaves, grasses, and plant roots. They’re opportunistic enough to eat lizards, dead birds, or rodents when they come across them, but animal matter typically makes up only about 0.1% to 0.3% of their total diet. They are, for all practical purposes, vegetarians.
In tropical forests, collared peccaries shift toward a fruit-based diet, eating fallen fruits, seeds, and a wider variety of plant material. They destroy the seeds of roughly 73% of the plant species they consume, crushing them with powerful jaws. But seeds from certain species, including figs and guava, pass through their digestive system intact and germinate in their droppings, making peccaries accidental gardeners for some tropical plants.
What White-Lipped Peccaries Eat
White-lipped peccaries live in the tropical forests of Central and South America, often traveling in large herds of 50 to 300 animals. Their diet centers on fruits, seeds, and palm nuts. They are wide-ranging seed predators, and their seasonal movements often track the fruiting cycles of palm trees. When palms like the buriti palm are shedding fruit, herds converge on those areas.
These peccaries are even more destructive to seeds than their collared cousins, killing the seeds of about 78% of the plant species they eat (97 out of 124 species documented). They crack open tough palm nuts that few other animals can access. In areas where natural habitat has been fragmented by agriculture, white-lipped peccaries will raid crops. DNA analysis of their diet has confirmed they eat flour corn and soybeans when natural food sources are scarce, though they still prefer native fruits like those from the tree species Fusaea longifolia.
What Chacoan Peccaries Eat
The Chacoan peccary is the rarest of the three species, found only in the dry Gran Chaco region of South America (parts of Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina). Its diet is the most specialized: in winter, it feeds almost exclusively on cactus. Documented species include several types of prickly pear along with columnar cacti. Chacoan peccaries also eat fallen flowers from tree cacti and dig up the roots and inner portions of bromeliad plants. This heavy reliance on cactus makes them more vulnerable than other peccaries to habitat loss in their already restricted range.
How Peccaries Digest Tough Plants
Peccaries can thrive on fibrous, spiny cactus partly because of an unusual stomach. Unlike pigs, which they superficially resemble, peccaries have a four-chambered stomach with two blind sacs and a glandular portion. This structure is more similar to the stomach of a ruminant like a cow than to a pig’s simple stomach, and it allows peccaries to ferment and break down tough plant fibers that would be difficult to digest otherwise. Their salivary glands also give them an advantage in processing carbohydrates compared to pigs.
One challenge of eating so much prickly pear cactus is oxalate, a compound in the pads that binds to calcium and locks it up in crystal form, making the calcium largely unavailable for absorption. Peccaries manage to thrive on this diet despite the reduced mineral availability, partly by supplementing their nutrition in other ways.
Why Peccaries Visit Mineral Licks
In the Amazon, collared peccaries regularly visit mineral licks, patches of exposed soil rich in specific minerals. They are among the most common visitors to these sites, alongside tapirs, agoutis, and deer. Research suggests peccaries seek out licks primarily for mineral supplementation rather than to neutralize plant toxins. They are drawn to sites with higher concentrations of sodium, copper, and zinc, minerals that can be hard to get from a fruit-and-cactus diet. Soil pH also plays a role: peccaries are more likely to show up at licks with higher pH levels, which tend to make minerals more soluble and easier to absorb.
Their Role as Seed Predators and Dispersers
Peccaries have an outsized effect on which plants succeed in tropical forests. They destroy the majority of seeds they eat by crushing them, which makes them one of the most significant seed predators in the Neotropics. Palm species like astrocaryum and buriti palms lose large numbers of seeds to both collared and white-lipped peccaries. When white-lipped peccaries disappear from an area, the density and distribution of palm seedlings measurably changes.
But peccaries also disperse seeds in several ways. Some seeds pass through their gut unharmed and germinate in feces. Others are spit out after the peccary strips away the fruit pulp, landing a short distance from the parent tree. Species dispersed this way include the tropical plum, jatobá, and several palm species. Peccaries even carry seeds stuck to their coarse fur, inadvertently transporting species like beggar’s ticks and other plants with barbed or sticky seeds. One tropical tree, the cannonball tree, may have evolved its uniquely tough seed coat specifically as an adaptation to survive being eaten by peccaries.