This fellow doesn’t look so excited about standing in the mud, does he? Truth is, he probably loves it. He’s a wild boar, a cousin of our mud-loving farm friend, the pig. Wild boars are a lot less friendly, though. Boy boars have sharp 2-inch long tusks, and if they chase you they’ll poke those tusks right into you! So you don’t want to hang out with these guys — even if you like hanging out in the mud.
Wee ones: We like to think of pigs as pink, but boars can be black, brown, red, or grey. How many colors can board be?
Little kids: Baby boars are called piglets. If you have 2 mama sows and twice as many piglets, how many boars of all ages do you have? Bonus: If a boar can smell you from up to 40 feet away and you’re only 30 feet away, what’s the shortest distance you need to run to be safe?
Big kids: Let’s say a “sounder” (group of boars) has some number of boars, and if you take that number, double it and add 5, you get 23. How many boars are in the sounder? Bonus: Only male boars have those tusks. If you have 24 boars chasing you but only 1/4 of them are male, how many tusks do they have all together?
The sky’s the limit: If you’re being chased by 16 boars, and together they have 4 times as many feet as tusks, how many of the boars must be males with tusks?
Answers:
Wee ones: 4 colors.
Little kids: 6 boars, since you have 4 piglets. Bonus: Anything more than 10 feet.
Big kids: 9 boars. If you added 5 to get 23, you had 18 before that, and you doubled to get 18. Bonus: 12 tusks, since you’re chased by 6 boars.
The sky’s the limit: 8 males. If they have 4 times as many feet as tusks, there must be 8 feet for every pair of tusks…which means for every 2 boars (8 feet), there’s just 1 pair of tusks. So 1/2 of the boars are male. Another way to solve it: 16 boars have 64 feet, which means they have 16 tusks, or 8 pairs.
