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.
Lace up: We like to think of pigs as pink, but boars can be black, brown, red, or grey. How many colors can board be?
Jog: 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?
Sprint: 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?
Hurdle: 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?
High Jump: 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?
Pole Vault: 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:
Lace up: 4 colors.
Jog: 6 boars, since you have 4 piglets.
Sprint: Anything more than 10 feet.
Hurdle: 9 boars. If you added 5 to get 23, you had 18 before that, and you doubled to get 18.
High Jump: 12 tusks, since you’re chased by 6 boars.
Pole Vault: 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.
