Anisette Fedor, age 11, of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, for her question::

How did the warthog get his name?

Don't feel impolite when you call this animal a warthog. He is a member of the pig family, which makes him a hog and on his face he wears the most outstanding warts in the world. True, hoggishness and warts are not polite features, as a rule. But they happen to be this fellow's most noticeable features.

This remarkable wild pig lives in parts of Africa that were settled by Dutch speaking Boers. They named him the vlakte vark, which means the plains pig. He was re named the warthog by English speaking settlers, maybe because they found his Dutch name hard to pronounce.

Some folks see him as the ugliest of all animals and certainly he is no beauty. Seen from a distance on the African plains, he looks somewhat like an unkindly caricature of a smallish horse with a short neck and an oversized head. The real shock comes when you behold him close up face to face.

It is a large, oblong face covered with rough, wrinkled slatey grey skin. A pair of piggy little eyes glitter below his hairy ears. Those wicked white, up curved moustaches are ivory tusks, a foot and sometimes two feet long. And there, out in plain sight, are the huge warts that give him his name, gristled and bristled. There may he a big warty bump beside each eye, one on each elongated cheek and another pair farther down on his long snout.

Nobody. can say for sure why the warthog has these warts, but we can make a couple of guesses. He lives in lion country where sometimes a face that is frightful enough to stop a clock comes in handy. The warthog trots fast enough to escape most predators. But when chased by a big fast cat, he backs into a hole, usually one left by some burrowing animal. Suddenly the pursuing cat is faced with his frightful face, the glittering eyes, the businesslike tusks plus a series of bewildering warts. The mere shock may be enough to change the plans of a lioness and save the warthog's life.

Then again, perhaps the outlandish bumps play a role in the mating game. Who knows, perhaps the female warthog regards warts as the very last word in irresistible masculine charm. At any rate, though she has tusks, only the male has warts.

The male warthog is a sizeable wild pig, weighing up to 200 pounds. His shoulders stand almost 30 inches high, his body is five feet long plus 18 inches of lively tail. His slately skin is sprinkled with bristles and he has a horsey mane of stiff hair. He trots like a pony and when feeding he often gets down on padded knees to munch tender grasses. He also digs roots, catches small animals and in times of drought he may feed on the carcasses of larger animals.

Usually, the male warthog lives a solitary life. The females tend to travel in groups of two or three with their growing piglets. At night the family group retires to a cave or to a sheltered den in the thickets. And though the male looks fierce enough to slay a dragon, usually he defends himself only when seriously provoked.