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Animal Themes
Mammals

Pigs

Pigs
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 3 to 6
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   8.3

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    image, cartilaginous, extremely, incident, species, stocky, vegetation, immediately, natural, tidy, uncover, slender, actually, underground, definitely, illegal
     content words:    Lake Somerville, Although Anthony

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Other Languages
     French: Les Cochons
     Spanish: Cerdos
     Italian: I MAIALI
     German: Schweine

Pigs   
1     Pigs definitely need an image makeover! When we think of pigs, our minds often drift to these mud-covered, filthy, always hungry farm animals. These unpleasant images really give pigs bad reputations and undermine their intelligence.
 
2     Also called swine or hogs, pigs have stocky and barrel-shaped bodies, four short but slender legs, and large heads. Their physical trademarks are, of course, their long, round, cartilaginous snouts. Pigs have an unusual bone, called the prenasal bone, located just below their disk-shaped snouts. Prenasal bones help strengthen pigs' snouts, making them a great digging tool.
 
3     Aside from snouts that function as bulldozers, pigs reinforce their chance of finding food by having an extremely fine sense of smell. Pigs can sniff out things hidden underground. Their diet includes fungi, fruits or other vegetation, insects, worms, mice, and other small animals. Well-recognized for their keen sense of smell, French people have used wild boars for centuries to find a French delicacy -- truffles. Truffles are edible fungi that grow deep below the surface. They give out a strong smell that wild boars can detect and unearth at ease. Just like the French who have come to rely on pigs' sensitive noses, police often bring trained pigs to airports or seaports to uncover illegal drugs that are concealed in cargos.

Paragraphs 4 to 9:
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