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Chapter

Part II Species Accounts

6

Sulawesi Babirusa Babyrousa celebensis

(Deninger, 1909)

Alastair A. Macdonald

Names

Genus: Babyrousa (Perry, 1811)

Species: Babyrousa celebensis (Deninger, 1909)

Names in other languages: French: Babiroussa des Célèbes; German: Sulawesi-Hirscheber; Italian: Babirussa di Celebes; Spanish:
Babirusa de Célebes; Minahasa, Sulawesi: Kalowatan.

The babirusa on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, have been the focus of local attention for about 35,400 years or more (Heekeren
1952, 1972; Eriawati 2003; Aubert et al. 2014). This is evidenced by the paintings of male and female images of these animals on the
walls of caves, East of Maros, in the southwest peninsula of the island (Figure 6.1A,B).
The fossil record is currently lacking. Briefly, four Pleistocene teeth found at Sompeh and Beru in South Sulawesi (Bartstra
1997) were initially described as Babyrousa babyrussa beruensis by Hooijer (1948). However, he subsequently reclassified these as
more probably Celebochoerus heekereni (Hooijer 1954). Although the current hypothesis is that the babirusa has developed since
Oligocene times (Thenius 1970), there is also the suggestion that the progenitor of the babirusa may have reached central Sulawesi at
a very much earlier date, perhaps during the Palaeogene (Van den Bergh et al. 2001). More recent, Holocene, sub-fossils of babirusa
have been found within the Tolian deposits (Sarasin & Sarasin 1905), collected from caves and rock shelters in south Sulawesi; these
have been described by Hooijer and named B. b. bolabatuensis (Hooijer 1950).
The babirusa is a somewhat bizarre pig in that the upper or maxillary canine teeth of the male grow through the skin of the nose
and curl over the face (Figure 6.2A). The growth process involved has recently been published (Macdonald et al. 2016). In the female,
these teeth are either markedly reduced or are absent. Attention external to eastern Indonesia was attracted to the animal in part by a
local story (Purchas 1625) reported in about 1512 to the Portuguese sea captain Antonie Galvano by the ‘King of Tydore’; he was told
that on the ‘Islands of Batochina . . . there are hogs also with horns’.

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