Yeah, things are still tough here at Tet Zoo Towers, and the time needed for blog-writing has yet to materialise. But the end is in sight, and things will be back to normal within the next few weeks. I hope.

If you've been reading the series of babirusa articles - and, hey, who hasn't? - you'll recall the mention of that most sought-after of objects: a male babirusa skull where one of the upper canines has pierced the frontal bone, and grown into the skull... perhaps with fatal consequences. Given the extraordinary form of the canines, it seems obvious and perhaps inevitable that at least one individual like this must exist. Some friends and correspondents say that they've seen a skull (or a photo of a skull) where this has happened, yet no-one has been able to show me the goods. Until now...

Yes, thanks to Tet Zoo reader and all round good-egg Henrik Petersson I've learnt within the last couple of weeks that a babirusa skull at the Museum of Natural History in Gothemburg (Sweden) shows exactly what we want to see. It's an old male with spectacular tusks, and the animal's right upper tusk has grown into its skull (for reasons that will become clear below, we'll call this skull 'skull 1'). Did this overgrowth of the tooth kill the animal? Unfortunately, we don't know, as the original label that accompanied the specimen is missing. We do know that the skull is one of about 60 that were obtained by Walter Kaudern while he was on survey on Sulawesi between 1916 and 1920.

Some of you might have seen Henrik bringing attention to this skull in the Tet Zoo comments a while ago. I hid his comment - with his permission - because I wanted to save the surprise for a dedicated article. Owlmirror picked up on this and even managed to find a black-and-white picture of what seems to be another skull (we'll call it 'skull 2') from the same collection: it's reproduced at left, and you can see it slightly larger here. Is this definitely a different skull from skull 1? I'm not sure: if you compare skulls 1 and 2 closely they're very similar; the only obvious difference concerns the lower canines, and these are so freakishly large and robust in skull 1 that I wonder about their authenticity. In other words: could skull 1 merely be skull 2, but fitted out with bigger, meaner-looking lower canines? It would be nice to know more!

So: babirusas can get impaled by their own teeth after all. Note that the individual or individuals shown in these photos have/had particularly long, magnificent canines, so 'self-impaling' is only going to happen in old, well ornamented males whose teeth are complete.

Here are more photos of skull 1, many thanks indeed to Henrik Petersson for supplying them.

For previous babirusa articles see...

And remember that babirusas are being threatened by illegal hunting (they are trapped and killed in central Sulawesi and then transported for sale in the Christian area in the north of the country): for more see Lynn Clayton's Babirusa.Org.

For other Tet Zoo articles on artiodactyls see...