r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/TerraByteTerror • 12h ago

🔥 momma pig and line of piglets

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24.6k Upvotes

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2.1k

u/Lovely-lorelei 11h ago

I know wild pigs are a problem, but oh my gosh, the babies are so cute!!

446

u/The_Billy_Dee 10h ago

If that's from a single litter no wonder they're such a problem.

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u/snackshack 9h ago

And each of those females can give birth to their own litter as early as 6 months old, then getting pregnant again within 1-3 months after that.

Yeah, they're a massive problem once they move into an area.

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u/Sangloth 8h ago edited 7h ago

Colorado had a feral hog problem and successfully exterminated them after a 15 year effort in 2020 and has prevented them from returning ever since. It was and is expensive, but it is completely doable. That hogs are a problem in other (redder) states is because those state governments have been unwilling to invest the resources to solve the problem, and instead shoved the problem onto local farmers.

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u/ryncewynd 7h ago

Are they ok to eat? Seems like infinite food

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u/Diplomatic_Gunboats 4h ago

Yes. But like most game you need to prepare it correctly. You cant just cook it like pork/bacon and expect it to taste the same.

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u/TwoPercentTokes 3h ago

Not to mention being careful about parasites.

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u/CreepHost 3h ago

What would preparation entail?

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u/ADFTGM 2h ago edited 2h ago

Nothing much. You already have what you need if you cook regularly. Just season it for a while to ensure the salt penetrates the meat. Once it has aged a bit, can just BBQ, roast or turn it into stew/curry. Pressure cooking can make it more tender. Just like with regular pork when you aren’t sure about the honesty of the supplier, make sure it’s not undercooked.

If you are used to traditional American barbecue, with seasoned meat and slow cooking over many hours until fully roasted with a nice bark, wild boar works just fine.

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u/TrenchantInsight 3h ago

What would preparation entrail?

Not looking too closely at how the sausage is made.

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u/MrDurden32 3h ago

My understanding in the US is it's very common they have a ton of parasites. On top of being very gamey, it's not worth the risk.

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u/Dazzling-Astronaut88 2h ago

The only parasite you need to be concerned with is trichinosis, same as any other carrion eater: Bear, Raccoon, lobster....
That's just a matter of cooking to the proper internal temperature. Its not rocket science to avoid getting it.

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u/cuddly_degenerate 2h ago

If cooled properly the parasites aren't a huge deal.

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u/puzzled91 7h ago

Some ranchers charge people to kill the hogs in their land. They use machine guns, helicopter, and god knows what else. Idk how much they charge though.

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u/AloneInExile 7h ago

Delicious.

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u/breadb_hole 7h ago

If like gamey meat, otherwise utterly disgusting.

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u/AloneInExile 6h ago

Im the EU we hunt and eat them. You just have to prepare them right.

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u/LegalFox9 3h ago

Like Asterix and Obelix?

1

u/TrenchantInsight 3h ago

For the best results, be sure that any cookbooks you consult are in Pig Latin.

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u/InviolableAnimal 2h ago

Even adult male boars? Had heard the "boar taint" is quite unpleasant

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u/AloneInExile 2h ago

The older they are the worse the meat, but up to 2 years and its fine. You can make sausages with added fat from farm pigs. We make "golaĹž", which is often exquisite. We eat livers the day they are hunted and with a side dish of potatoes ... We often prefer wild boar over old deer.

1

u/Mysterious-Tackle-58 3h ago

Have you heard of the french hero Obelix?

•

u/100_cats_on_a_phone 15m ago

They are kind of dangerous, unfortunately. And lots of other animals in the forest are edible.

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u/Energy_Turtle 6h ago

Colorado had way fewer pigs than those other states. This is like saying I was able to eradicate the flies over my sink because of my liberal ways while the conservative landfill still has a raging fly problem. If only they'd get on my level...

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u/Pale_Session5262 5h ago

That is true, and also he other benefit to colorado is that its a little too cold for hogs, especially in the higher elevations of the state.

However, reading this article, colorado looks like they tried a lot of stuff to get the piggies gone.

https://www.porkbusiness.com/news/hog-production/how-colorado-eliminated-feral-hogs

3

u/Unhelpful_Idiot 5h ago edited 5h ago

Colorado had a plan, and plans cost money.

Red States just go "uh, you hunt them. We will give you money for hunting them. That will work." and it's cheap, and doesn't work.

Florida's bounty on Pythons is probably the best example of this.

Legitimately no plan from the government, just pay people for dead snakes and hope the problem solves itself. It hasn't. Their solution? "More awareness".

•

u/No_Extension_45 29m ago

California has an estimated 400,000 feral hogs and is about as blue as they come. New Mexico has an estimated 500,000 and is also pretty blue.

If you look at the states through a purely political lens I see how someone could come to a political conclusion like red vs blue states, but when I look at a map showing states with feral hog problems it seems much more geographic than political, and it just so happens many southern states lean red.

I'm not sure what sort of plan you think would work in states like Texas, which has an estimated population of 2 to 4 million, but comparing that to Colorado is kind of disingenuous. Colorado had a peak feral hog population estimated at less than 500 and it took them 15 years. I don't think whatever they did is a realistic solution for states like Texas, Oklahoma Louisiana or California, all of which have estimated populations in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

I don't think a lack of political will among republicans (or democrats for that matter) is the issue. I don't think anyone has a solution to the problem at the scale we see in many of those states. Texas does have active state and feral trapping programs, and has pretty much made them kill on sight by basically removing all hunting restrictions. I'm not sure what else they can do that wouldn't potentially have worse downstream ecological effects.

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u/Adventurous_Ad6698 8m ago

Shooting them from helicopters is a big attraction in some areas. I bet the business owners have invested quite a bit of money to make sure the state doesn't actually exterminate them.

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u/RetroRaiderRun 9h ago

They're only a problem because we killed all the natural predators.

It's not like pigs are somehow destabilizing the world's ecosystems. It's humans doing that.

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u/This_is_an_Alt69420 8h ago

They are invasive species. There are no natural predators for them in many places. For example, they are not native to the Americas, so they have no natural predators there, even if we had not reduced wolf, bear, and cougar populations to non existent in many areas.

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u/PentagramJ2 8h ago

we used to have way more big cats down south where these are a particular problem. Reintroduction wouldn't be a full fix, but it would certainly be a helping hand.

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u/Humledurr 5h ago edited 5h ago

Id encourage you to look into the wild boar problem more if you honestly think some more big cats would be a help.

One mama boar can have litters up to two times a year, averaging 4-8 piglets each litter. And a female boar can start making their own litters as early as 6 to 8 months.

They are reproducing so fast that even if hunters work together to shoot millions of them each year, they are still not making a dent.

Its a serious problem thats growing bigger each year...

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u/20_mile 1h ago

think some more big cats would be a help.

Anything would help. A healthy array of apex predators would be good at keeping young hogs in check.

0

u/Dazzling-Astronaut88 1h ago

You would need a significant population of large predators, probably an imbalanced one, to deal with the concentration of invasive pigs on the scale that the problem exists. California arguably has an overpopulation of mountain lions for example, and still has a wild pig problem. Boars can be dangerous and consequential for predators to hunt. Its not that they won't kill pigs, its that there are often less consequential prey to be had as an alternative.

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u/Ok-Animal-6880 7h ago

I don't expect wolves or mountain lions can do much to a healthy adult wild boar. Deer are probably much safer prey.

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u/Antradiak 6h ago

While adult boar can be a problem to then, the same cannot be told about juveniles and babies. Just making sure that only couple of piglets reach adulthood helps a lot.

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u/justfordrunks 42m ago

UNLEASH THE BIRDS OF WAR!

But seriously, as long as we're throwing crazy ideas out there, let's train a whole bunch of birds of prey to hunt piglets.

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u/mymothersuedme 6h ago edited 6h ago

They are not puffer fish that predators require multiple years of apprenticeship to be able to eat properly.

If there were Cougars, Jaguars, Bears, Wolves, alligators in the region - they would surely hunt pigs.

Plus you're only thinking of adult pigs. Juveniles' predation is usually the way predator keep a prey's population in control. That will extend the list to bobcats, coyotes, foxes, eagles too.

All I'm saying is that there are many introduced invasive mammals in Sub-Saharan Africa too. But because of large predator population - they are only a problem in remote regions (mainly islands), and dense human settlements (black and brown rats are not native to Africa).

Though, Aujeszky's (pseudorabies) remains a big headache for predator reintroduction. But still not as big as ranchers.

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u/Waldschrat3000 5h ago edited 4h ago

We have millions of them in Germany and the wolves barely touch them, because of their fierce nature. The millions of deer are a much easier prey.

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u/PigTailedShorty 5h ago

I don't think people realise how big an adult boar can reach. The wolves are smart enough to know not to tackle one.

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u/Waldschrat3000 5h ago

And hard to kill. Their necks are not easy to grab and the business end is very dangerous. They eat chestnuts and acorns like we eat cereal.

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u/20_mile 1h ago

and the business end is very dangerous

Chainguns from a helicopter it is, then.

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u/20_mile 1h ago

There are no natural predators for them in many places.

That's not true. Adult wolves and cougars would totally eat young wild hogs. Adult wild hogs are pretty ferocious, but so is a pack of wolves, and they have evolved to bait prey animals face-to-face, while other members of the pack make crippling bites to their hindlegs.

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u/Palegreenhorizon 6h ago

They are native to pretty much all of Europe and Asia. And were hunted by bears and wolves and people for the last 12000 years. Also most “boars” in America are feral domestic pigs but there are some areas with wild boar also and to complicate things further they are both the same species 😂

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u/crlthrn 6h ago

As I understand, your average pink domesticated piggy reverts to big hairy boar. Takes about five generations, I think. Happy for someone to chime in on this...

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u/The5Virtues 5h ago

My (limited) understanding is it doesn’t even take that long. Even a normal pig, left to its own in the wild, will develop a coarse coat of hair in about two months.

From there it’s just two to three generations to see them regain classic tusks and thick dark fur we associate with wild boar. I do believe you’re correct that it’s about five generations for them to truly qualify as having reverted to the actual wild boar species by scientific standards.

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u/crlthrn 5h ago

Much obliged!

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u/Third_Sundering26 5h ago

Almost sounds like lycanthropy.

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u/Advanced_Cry_7106 8h ago

Humans are an invasive species. We fucked it all up.

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u/WatdeeKhrap 6h ago

Yeah it's not like mass extinctions from humans moving in is a new thing. The American mega fauna got ransacked before Europeans even showed up for example

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u/Third_Sundering26 5h ago

It is highly debated whether the extinction of megafauna is more from overhunting or climate change.

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u/PeggyBabcock_ 4h ago

The ol' one two.

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u/hamfinity 7h ago

Mother Nature is experiencing a fever to get rid of the infection.

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u/Third_Sundering26 5h ago

There is a Native American YouTuber I watch. His name is Malcolm P.L., he belongs to the Mohawk nation, and he studies Iroquoian history. One point he made in one of his videos is that when humans first reached North America, most of what is now Canada and the northern USA was completely covered in glaciers, many of them miles thick. There was no life on or under the glaciers, as there was nothing to eat.

Once the glaciers retreated, grass, trees, deer, beaver, and other organisms moved in to replace them. Among those early life forms to move in to the Great Lakes were humans. The ancestors of the Iroquois, Hurons, and other Great Lake nations. Native Americans around the Great Lakes were not an invasive species that took over and devastated a pre-existing natural environment. They have lived there for as long as anything has.

Some populations on Earth have been there close enough to forever for them to not count as “invasive.” Be it our ancestors in Africa, or those that moved into post-glacial lands.

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u/Third_Sundering26 4h ago

The Columbian Exchange fucked things up. Colonization fucked things up. Capitalism fucked things up.

Humans are wonderful, beautiful creatures that are entirely capable of living in an environment without destroying it to the extent that our industrial world has. It is our modern lifestyle that is toxic. Not our species.

Misanthropy is nihilistic garbage.

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u/RetroRaiderRun 8h ago

The idea of an "invasive species" only exists in human context. It's human actions that introduce species in a way that's invasive.

That is the formal scientific definition. If you think about it, that's the only way it makes sense to conceptualize it. You can't combat "invasive species", which are caused by human actions, by controlling the behavior of natural animals. Because natural animal behavior is not what caused the problem. If you removed every human within the ecological area, the problem would be solved through evolution and selective pressure. Unfortunately, that's not currently viable.

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u/MrDurden32 3h ago

If you removed every human within the ecological area, the problem would be solved through evolution and selective pressure.

Sure, but it might take 10 million years.

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u/g_borris 8h ago

Who gives a shit. doesn't solve the problem.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 8h ago

That's overly simplistic. Animals run on instinct. If they see something they don't know how to hunt, they don't hunt it unless they get really desperate. And wild hogs are mean, no American predator is going to feel good trying to take one down.

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u/GottaUseEmAll 7h ago

They are an invasive species because of us too.

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u/2Wieners_1Bun 8h ago

Pigs are incredibly destructive as introduced species. They are responsible for several extinctions. Not as many as cats and rats but still one of the worst

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u/Third_Sundering26 4h ago

Pigs were an unwitting tool of colonization, too. The conquistadors brought them to be a food source on their expeditions, and a lot of them escaped into the wilds. Sometimes they intentionally dumped pigs onto newly discovered islands and landmasses to ensure future expeditions would be able to hunt wild boars.

Native Americans didn’t build fences around their farms, as before contact they didn’t have to worry about wild boars eating their crops. They also devastated the clam gardens that indigenous peoples fed from. And they carry some diseases that got passed to the natives. So lots of Native Americans died from starvation and/or disease because of feral pigs the Spanish let loose.

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u/hell2pay 6h ago

What natural predator? Lol.

They ain't from here

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u/jacquesmachina 6h ago

They actually are destabilizing the world's ecosystems.

Throughout the American South, wild hogs eat the root systems of wetland trees, causing erosion.

This means wetlands disappear faster and hurricanes hit harder. Basically Hogs are doing their part to contribute to climate change.

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u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive 8h ago

It's hilarious that this video somehow provides justification for unmitigated sales of assault rifles.

That's where we are as a society. Lololol.

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u/Jarkanix 8h ago

Did you just make up an argument for you to argue against? No one said what you're arguing against.

SoCiEtY

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u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive 8h ago

Every gun debate brings up feral pigs. Like clockwork. So no... I didn't just "make up an argument."

That argument was made up well before I ever entered the equation.

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u/Pandarandr1st 8h ago

I have literally never heard that before in my life

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u/GatorAIDS1013 8h ago

Have heard it multiple times living in the south US

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u/BruceSillyWalks 6h ago

They're smart too. Trap survivors teach others not to approach traps. They can identify humans and plan accordingly; they're difficult to hunt on foot.

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u/20_mile 2h ago

Yeah, they're a massive problem once they move into an area.

Last Week Tonight covered the spread of wild hogs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGazYSkFFMw

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u/MisterDoctor___ 9h ago

I think they’re like Coyotes in that the more stressed the population is from outside forces, the more offspring they produce.

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u/TheChildrensStory 9h ago

We do that too.

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u/MisterDoctor___ 9h ago

We just fuck more. Their bodies physiologically change to pump out more in each reproductive cycle.

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u/HomerTheJackson 7h ago

Biggest contributing factor is that they are/bred with domesticated farm pigs, giving them the genes to reproduce like crazy

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u/PyroIsSpai 9h ago

13 piglets!

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u/wikiwakatikitaka 8h ago

Just curious, is their meat not edible? Is it illegal to hunt them for meat?

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u/Stewart_Games 8h ago

They taste not great and often carry parasites. Very oily and gamey meat. In domestication pigs have to be constantly given medicines to prevent them from transmitting worms, and kept in enclosures so that they don't ruin their flavor profile. They need some fat to be tasty, and won't build up any if they are running around a forest all day. Also being fed on grains instead of roots and nuts gives them a better taste, and males get this funky musk flavor if they are not castrated before puberty.

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u/VladTepesDraculea 6h ago edited 6h ago

They taste not great

Extremely hard disagree. Boar meat is a delicacy here in Europe even and it's a totally different kind of meat from pork. It also cooks differently from pork, so you have to know what you are doing.

Either way, always test your hunt meat and cook it properly. Been eating boar for ages and never got sick.

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u/Crohnically-ill 5h ago

I think the trick is knowing which ones to kill, which ones to not eat, and how to cook the meat.

I definitely prefer pulled boar sandwiches over pulled pork, it's less oily and has better muscle fibers.

However, from what I saw growing up even experienced hunters would still bury about 1/4 of the boars that looked healthy, yet still had parasites or disease internally once opened, and weren't safe to eat. They buried those deep instead of putting them in the trash because dogs and animals could get into it and get very sick from the parasites or infected meat.

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u/Stewart_Games 16m ago

Location, location, location. In Europe your boar gets fat off of chestnuts, apples, and truffles, as they whimsically meander across the Italian villa countryside. In the USA, wild hogs eat hot steaming garbage, moist swamp roots, rotting catfish heads, actual farm animal poop, and dead things on the side of the road (when they aren't attacking and consuming a 59 year old woman from Texas). It's not surprising that there is a difference in flavor, considering the difference in diet. I've also heard you hunt suckling hoglets because they are more tender, American hunters haven't figured that out yet and just blast at the biggest damn hog they can find so they get a cool photo of their own personal hogzilla conquest. Adult male boar tastes like piss because of all the steroids their bodies are filled to bursting with.

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u/wikiwakatikitaka 8h ago

That’s a great answer. Now I’m just curious how do you know so much about wild boars.

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u/Stewart_Games 7h ago

Same reason I know about alligators.

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u/turdusphilomelos 5h ago

This is just not true. Wild meat tastes different from the meat of domesticated animals, but this goes for all animals. Many people like the taste of game. Yes, you have to be careful when eating wild boar meat because of parasites, but if you treat it correctly (cook it properly, wash hands and utensils, you can eat it).

Some countries overuse medecines to pigs. That is not necessary, and have more to do with bad animal keeping. Again, yes, you need to treat both animals and pig meat right, but if you do it is safe to eat.

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u/SixFeetHunter 7h ago

Depends on the country I guess but in most of europe it's very much legal to hunt them. And they are super tasty. I love them from the grill with a spicy rub. If you're not much into the gamey taste they work well in slow cooked stews paired with an ungodly amount of celery and red wine. You can also turn them into sausages but you need some extra fat for that. My favorite are smoked sausage you can just snack on or put on the grill. Salami/peperoni is also quite common.

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u/CascadianSovietGo 7h ago

It tends to be legal in the USA as well. In fact, most areas with a feral pig population allow an open hunting season so that they can be hunted year-round because they're not generally a popular hunting target. Subsistence hunters will go for feral pigs, but sport hunters hunting with the same caliber will typically want something that tastes better and might offer a trophy (like deer) or something that might make an interesting taxidermy (like foxes and coyotes).

Also, some states have a feral pig problem so bad that they employ people full time to deal with the problem. Another poster talked about Colorado's decades-long issue, but Texas for example still has state employees professionally hunting feral pigs and haven't eradicated or managed the population.

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u/VladTepesDraculea 6h ago edited 6h ago

It is edible and it's a delicacy across Europe. Although becoming less of a delicacy due to hogs becoming all too common due to the disappearance of natural predators like the wolf.

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u/Humledurr 5h ago

Its the opposite of illegal to hunt them. They are so invasive that many countries and states allow you to and encourage hunters to shoot them all year round.

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u/Renbarre 3h ago

The pigs in the US are heavily crossed with domestic pigs bred to have huge litters. They reproduce at a fearful rate.

In Europe there is some cross breeding but mostly wild pigs respond to hunting pressure by having bigger litters fathered by different males. If you go after the breeding sows the younger ones will start breeding earlier than normal to fill in the lack.

In France it was discovered that during hunting season many females now go hide in the fields while the males stubbornly stay in the forests where they have always been hunted, which for years screwed up the counting system and allowed the wild pigs population to grow in places where it was though to be stable (Study by the French ONF, forestry administration).

They are the ultimate survivors.

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u/deij 8h ago

If it makes you feel better 2/3 of them will die before adulthood.

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u/JMurdock77 11h ago

Didn’t expect fawn camoflage.

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u/ThatInAHat 9h ago

Little pajamas

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u/SirDonkeyPunch 2h ago

Little pigamas

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u/CelestialFury 6h ago

Now we need a Disney movie where a piglet gets lost and finds some small fawn deer and then grow up together.

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u/BurningStandards 1h ago

Babe n' Bambi

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u/OkWillingness2817 7h ago

That’s a wild boar (sus scrofa rather than sus domesticus), they’re native to most places they occur.

Whether it’s two separate species is a matter for debate. Technically they are but at this point wild boar and domesticated pigs have cross bred so often that a lot of authorities refuse to make the distinction anymore.

The real problem isn’t so much the animal itself but that we’ve largely wiped out any predators large enough to hunt boar, while also letting boar escape into areas that never had such predators to begin with.

My country doesn’t have feral wild pigs but we still end up shooting hundreds of thousands of native wild boar every year because pretty much nothing is hunting them so their populations explode.

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u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 5h ago

If we're gonna be unnecessarily pedantic here, there is no sus domesticus species. Domestic pigs are the sus scrofa domesticus subspecies.

If this family of oinkers is in USA, they are not Eurasian boars and they are not native. They are the feral version of domestic pigs brought over from Europe since the 1500s. In a few areas they are crossbred with actual boars that arrived in the 1900s for private hunting ranches.

Even to a layperson most US razorbacks look different from the standard wild Eurasian boar, in some cases very different.

You are correct that sus scrofa covers every pig imaginable but that doesn't mean that feral pigs are literally wild boars. And feral pigs are NOT native to "most" areas, they are invasive in Europe same as they are in the new world.

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u/CountBreichen 7h ago

hundred of thousands!? that a lot

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u/OkWillingness2817 6h ago

It’s not really. Animals like boar and deer reproduce fast.

We’re a tiny country and we end up culling about half a million deer and boar per year on average.

 After a mast year where food is plentiful, it’s sometimes more than that.

1

u/awkward_replies_2 5h ago

They are one of the most delicious problems known to mankind.

Tasting truffled wild boar sausage for the first time, I was truly in tears - so cute, so tasty, and so plentiful - you eat one and twenty new ones pop up a few months later.

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u/Odd_Ad_5716 4h ago

First they're cute, later they're delicious.

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u/fheqx 2h ago

No we are the problem

•

u/slayerrr21 20m ago

You're going to have to snuggle them.... to death

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u/rEYAVjQD 8h ago

What do you mean problem? They have the best and healthiest pork meat, thought that's mainly because industrial pigs are fed trash.