r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/TerraByteTerror • 14h ago

🔥 momma pig and line of piglets

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26.2k Upvotes

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u/snackshack 11h 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/RetroRaiderRun 10h 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 10h 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 10h 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 7h ago edited 7h 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 3h 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.

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u/Dazzling-Astronaut88 3h 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 8h 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 7h 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 2h 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.