I believe the tusks naturally break through conflict or possibly fall out after a certain period from general wear. It is very, very rare for them to actually die from it.
If you're talking about pigs in general, then yes, it's not very common for this to happen. I was referring to this specific boar, though. Any combat this boar sees would likely drive the tusks deeper into its skull, or otherwise exacerbate the issue. Not to mention there's also the risk of infection setting it.
Talk about hellish torture. Imagine if your lower teeth never stopped growing toward your brain or your sternum grew outside of your body and turned back between your ribs to your heart. Like a visible cancer. You’d feel the pain as the bone penetrated your flesh and spend every day watching your own body slowly kill itself. Is today the day my brain gets impaled? Is today the day my heart gets pierced? Thank goodness for modern day surgical procedures and slightly less wonky human anatomy.
It could be more of a death via infection possibly. And depending on how slow it goes through the brain and what regions it hits, it could just begin inhibititing it to the extent that it can't protect its territory or is killed by a rival. I'm not confident on neurology to say if the brain would be able to heal itself and reroute the processes faster than the tusks could destroy things.
@flyingoctopus Imagine if one of your tentacles slowly calcified and grew back on itself inching imminently, spearlike, toward your internal organs while you slowly had to accept that your fleshy invertebrate core can offer you no protection against... yourself. Better?
I can't describe how much I'd love to see a video of people sedating him, performing surgery on him aka shortening his tusks and releasing him back into the wild.
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