Hogs and pigs get their reputation as walking garbage disposals from their omnivorous eating habits. They use their snouts, strong front feet, and long tusks to turn over soil to find a variety of foods. Their rooting around might yield worms, insects, snails, roots, fungi, seeds, or plant tubers. The wide range of foods they eat gives them a reputation for being unselective. Some species will even consume bird eggs, frogs, small reptiles, or large, dead mammals. With small eyes located high on their heads, hogs and pigs don?t have good eyesight for finding food. However, they do have well-developed senses of taste and smell. Their snouts are flexible for better rooting around, thanks to muscles supporting a cartilage disk at the end. Hogs and pigs make an impact on their habitats, damaging vegetation, but also spreading seeds and baring soil where new plants can take root.

Mammals are able to make enough internal body heat to keep their bodies at a relatively constant, high temperature. Endothermy (endo= inside; thermic= heat) makes mammals less dependent on outside temperatures, freeing them to be active in a wide range of conditions. Mammals may be active at night (nocturnal) or in the day (diurnal), in climates as extreme as the cold poles or the hot tropics. Adaptations to warm up or cool off, such as shivering and sweating, allow mammals to maintain their preferred body temperatures in the face of these extremes. Mammals also regulate body temperature with behavior: elephants flapping ears to cool off, humans wearing coats to warm up, dogs panting to cool down. The hairs making up mammal fur are raised or lowered to provide more or less insulation as needed.