Chalky coloured banding. Very little data to go by here.
Undercover down the side of the house, on a wooden shed base, a medium-sized, aggressive* hog repeatedly licked the wooden floor (about ten times) then would roll over awkwardly and appear to lick its lower spines as far back as it could. It didn’t appear to lick its fur.
It would tend to overreach, topple and suddenly right itself in an undignified manner. I saw about five cycles of this process.
The medium hog, a newcomer, was the first one I’ve seen of approximately five, that had a chalky band across its body.
I’ve seen mention of colour banding in this forum where there was a suspicion of human interference.
However, seeing the hog roll over where it had licked the wooden floor (otherwise pointlessly as there was no food there) I infer the hog was perhaps coating its spines via indirect transmission.
Speculation: Coating itself in its own bug repellent?
Speculation: Perhaps, like urates from a tortoise, the colouration to white takes time to occur?
A little while later I noticed a couple of unmistakable chalky spots not seen earlier in the thirty minutes of watching this particular scene (I watched other activity intermittently before and after), but it’s quite possible I had missed them.
*Aggression: <I’m comparing to previous hogs and the other, large, hog nearby, which it arrived after, and had butted several times with no reaction… I haven’t ruled out they could be related as the large one seemed to tolerate it but without backing down, at the food bowl for instance.
I don’t know if the aggression is relevant, mentioned just in case.>
Could all be coincidence. The medium hog was a strange character. For all its aggression, it ate far less food than the other hog and was not so clever e.g. it walked off instead of waiting its turn to eat -seen with other hogs.
