Pig

Lore & Background

Pigs have featured in human culture since Neolithic times, appearing in art and literature for children and adults, and celebrated in cities such as Bologna for their meat products.

In Their Own Story

The morning mist clung to the low-hanging branches as a sounder of feral hogs moved silently through the underbrush. The matriarch, her coat thick and bristling with burrs, paused to test the air with a wet, twitching snout. She detected the faint scent of truffles deep beneath the loam, a signal that sent the younger pigs rooting frantically in the leaf litter. Their hooves crunched softly on dry twigs, a rhythm broken only by the low grunts of communication. Nearby, a wolf watched from the shadows, eyes narrowed, but the sheer number of the herd and the sharp tusks of the adults kept it at bay. This was not a mindless slaughterhouse scene, but a complex dance of survival, intelligence, and ancient instinct playing out beneath the canopy, where every root turned is a gamble for tomorrow.

Reader's Guide

Pigs are farmed primarily for meat, called pork. The animal's skin or hide is used for leather. China is the world's largest pork producer, followed by the European Union and then the United States. Around 1.5 billion pigs are raised each year, producing some 120 million tonnes of meat, often cured as bacon. Some are kept as pets.

Did You Know?

• Pigs were domesticated independently twice during the Neolithic, in the Near East around the Tigris Basin, and in China.
• Pigs possess both apocrine and eccrine sweat glands, although the latter are limited to the snout.
• Pigs are among four mammalian species with mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom.
• The genome of the pig has been sequenced; it contains about 20,000 to over 22,000 protein-coding genes.