What Do Wild Boar Eat? Rooting, Acorns and Opportunism

The main foods of wild boar

Biologists often divide the wild boar diet into four groups:

Plants and fungi usually make up the vast majority of what a boar eats, often around 90% by volume in European studies, but the exact mix changes with season, habitat and what is available. A 50 kg (110 lb) boar needs roughly 4,000–4,500 kilocalories a day, more in winter and during pregnancy.

How does rooting work?

Rooting is the boar’s trademark way of feeding. The snout ends in a tough, flat disc of cartilage backed by a special bone, and the thick neck is packed with muscle. Moving forward like a plow, a boar can turn over large areas of turf in a single night. It can even break into frozen ground to a depth of around 8–10 cm (3–4 in) and push aside stones weighing tens of kilograms.

Its sense of smell guides the digging. Boar can detect bulbs, tubers, truffles and other fungi, insect grubs and earthworm-rich patches deep in the soil. That excellent nose is the reason domestic pigs have long been used to find truffles.

Rooted ground looks as if it has been roughly plowed, with turf flipped over in strips and patches. This has big effects on the ecosystem. It mixes soil, speeds up the recycling of nutrients and creates bare ground where seeds can sprout. It can also damage meadows, lawns, crops and rare plants, and in some places it helps invasive plants spread.

Acorns, beechnuts and mast years

In temperate Europe, the fruits of oak and beech trees, together called mast, are the most important single food for wild boar. They are rich in starch and fat, perfect for building up the fat reserves boar need to get through winter.

Oaks and beeches do not produce the same crop every year. In some years, called mast years, the trees produce enormous numbers of nuts all at once. When that happens, wild boar eat well through autumn and winter, more young females breed, and sows have larger litters. The following spring, boar numbers can rise sharply. Many European scientists see repeated mast years, together with milder winters and more maize fields, as major reasons why boar populations have grown so much in recent decades.

In years when the mast crop fails, boar turn to roots, grass, bark and fungi, and are more likely to visit farm fields.

Do wild boar eat meat?

Yes. Wild boar are opportunists and eat animal food when they come across it. Earthworms and beetle larvae, such as cockchafer grubs, are especially important and are dug up in large numbers. Boar also eat snails, ground-nesting birds’ eggs and chicks, mice and voles, frogs, lizards and snakes.

They scavenge carcasses and, rarely, kill larger prey such as newborn deer fawns, young hares or lambs. In some river deltas in Russia and Central Asia, boar have even been recorded eating large amounts of fish. Pigs carry a genetic change in a nerve receptor that makes them less sensitive to some snake neurotoxins, a trait shared with mongooses, honey badgers and hedgehogs.

Crops, gardens and garbage

Where forests meet farmland, wild boar readily eat maize, wheat, oats, potatoes, sugar beet, grapes and other crops, and they also damage fields by trampling and rooting. Crop raiding tends to rise when natural food such as acorns is scarce.

In and around cities, boar that lose their fear of people learn to eat from garbage bins, compost heaps and gardens, and sometimes from people’s hands. Berlin, Barcelona and Rome are among the European cities with well-known urban boar. Feeding them is a bad idea: fed boar become bold, and conflicts and road collisions increase. For safety tips, see are wild boar dangerous?.

Wild boar diet compared with domestic pigs

Domestic pigs descend from wild boar and share the same flexible digestive system. On farms, though, they are usually fed formulated feed rather than foraging. Wild boar spend much of their active time searching for food, covering several kilometers a night. Read more about the domestic pig.

Myths about wild boar food

Myth: boar only eat garbage and crops. Most wild boar live in forests and eat natural foods. Crop and garbage raiding happen mainly where boar live close to people.

Myth: boar are mainly hunters. Animal food is a small but useful part of the diet. Wild boar are omnivorous foragers, not predators that rely on hunting.