A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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javelina
The javelina is the collared peccary, a pig-shaped animal of the American Southwest and Latin America that is not a pig. It travels in family groups of six to twenty, has a scent gland on its back that the herd uses to mark and recognize one another, sees poorly and smells extremely well, and eats prickly pear pads spines and all. It stands about two feet at the shoulder.
Etymology
The name is Spanish, from the word for a wild boar, which Spanish took from Arabic during the centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia. The Arabic phrase meant, roughly, the mountain one. Spanish speakers arriving in the Americas found an animal that looked like the boar they knew, applied the familiar word, and it stuck, which is how an Arabic description of a Spanish mountain ended up naming a Sonoran Desert mammal.
Notes
Peccaries and true pigs separated a very long time ago and differ in ways you can see: Peccaries have straight tusks that point down rather than curling out, three toes on the hind foot rather than four, and a complex stomach. The scent gland gives a herd a strong musky smell that carries, which is why the animal is also called the musk hog, and why you usually smell javelina before you see them.