On January 8, 2017, an eight-year-old boy named Dante de Kort spotted a dead collared peccary near his home in central Arizona. For his school science fair project, he set up a motion-activated camera—a birthday present from his grandparents—next to the corpse.

Little did he know that his school project would offer an invaluable glimpse at how these animals respond to death.

At a regional science fair with her daughter in February, Prescott College biologist Mariana Altrichter was immediately struck by de Kort's videos. Having studied the social, pig-like mammals for years, Altrichter knew how tightly bonded peccaries could be. But she'd never witnessed herd members return to a body repeatedly. (Read: "Where Peccaries Wallow, Other Animals Follow.")

“It