(…and why do I ask?)
In the HBO gritty Western Deadwood, a dead man is dumped into a pig sty and the pigs are happily sucking on the cadaver.
Is that more than Artisitic License?
Not really, no. Pigs are omnivores and will literally eat almost anything. In some areas of the U.S. feral pigs were for a time being tied to declining populations of deer due to their predation on fawns ( who were not adapted to dealing with pigs, which are non-native in most of North America, the javelinas of the southwest excepted ).
A hand-reared, “pet” pig might balk ( for awhile ), but to your average pig, meat is meat.
- Tamerlane
He might be balking at the “hand-rearing”.
In rural areas of this country the comment “I haven’t had so much trouble since the pigs are Grandpa,” is a common expression of really big but somehow amusing bad luck. In the country little kids are reminded to stay out of the hog lot lest the pigs eat them. Occasionally some farmer will have a heart attack in the pig yard and be badly savaged before he can get out or be dragged out. There is a photograph of a dead Confederate soldier on the Gettysburg battlefield with a gapping hole where his abdomen ought to be. It was once passed off as a photo of a soldier killed by artillery fire but recent analysis indicates that the body was feed on by pigs which had been turned out in the woods to fend for themselves.
Pigs are not trustworthy animals. They are always hungry and they will eat anything. They are big and strong and once they get an idea in their head they don’t change their mind. There are two farm animals you don’t turn your back on, a Holstein bull and a mature pig of any gender.
Pigs were routinely turned out in the Spring an allowed to roam at will until the Fall, when they would be rounded up and slaughtered. They could be set loose because, as has been pointed out, they will eat anything and are very capable of protecting themselves. Today, the tusks of hogs are routinely cut out when they’re born so that they don’t have any additional tools to do you, or each other, harm.
In short, yes, pigs will eat humans. They’ll eat anything.
My father was a JAG prosecutor in Viet Nam. During one particular murder investigation he came upon a half-buried body that had been dug up by pigs, who were feasting on it even as he approached.
It was years before he could bring himself to eat pork products again.
:eek:
They also eat other hogs. They start eating a tail and don’t stop (they’re still alive BTW). Their needle teeth are clipped and tails docked when young (piglets) to cut down on this. They’ll consume dead animals of any type as well. If you put a small child or disabled human in a pen of hogs, then they would be eaten alive.
One of my friends used to say, “We ain’t had so much excitement around here since the hog ate baby sister!”
Given that certain cannibal societies refer to human as Long Pig I had my own concerns about what exactly was being shipped out in that story.
OP: Hell yeah pigs’ll eat people. Didn’t you see what they did to that kid in “OLD YELLER”?
“… since the pig IS Grandpa…”, surely?
Not to mention Hannibal Lechter–was it in the 3rd book that flesh-eating pigs play an important role?
Warning. The rest of this is gross:
One of the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen was when I started working on a hog farm during summers when I was in high school. Gilts and sows especially are prone to a condition called prolapsed rectum, where their intestines come out inside out. It is more likely to occur if the hog has a cough due to pneumonia or something.
I was a city kid. Totally unprepared for this. I got back from cultivating one day just after I started working there, and the farmer called me down to the hog lot. Laying there in the dust was a live gilt, with several feet bloody intestines on the ground, inside out. When he had found her, other hogs were chewing on her intestines, and pulling them further out. They would have, without question, killed her and eaten her.
The rest of the story is that all I could think to ask was, “so you want me to go up to the house to get a gun?”
“Nope.”
We got the hog in the barn, bathed the intestines in some sort of antiseptic, stuffed them back in, took a large curved needle for sewing up burlap bags and some heavy thread, and partially sewed the anus up. Then we gave her a massive dose of antibiotics. Unbelievably, she lived. In fact, several weeks later we had to sort through 200 hogs to find her to take out the stitches.
Do hogs eat people? Your damned right they do. Sometimes you get a batch a pretty wild ones who are dangerous as hell.
My wife and I were visiting her cousin and I went with him to feet his hogs. He told me to stay out of the yard and he hauled the feed in a wagon and tractor. He never got off the rig but drove past the trough stopping to shovel the feed out from time to time.
I lived around farms all my life up to WWII and had never encountered “wild” hogs before although I knew that hogs could be dangerous and should be watched.
In hindsight, this thread makes me realize that in my rash, 6 year old youth, I should have been more careful around the fence surrounding the hogs.
Then again, I don’t remember a lot of violent behavior, and my dad and uncle spent a good amount of time in the pig pen.
One time a rooster was standing on a post that formed part of the pig pen at my grandfather’s farm. In an amazingly quick motion a huge hog leaped up and caught it in its mouth, the rooster was dead and devoured in seconds.
I’d say they’d definately anything and everything that is in front of them.
The feeding of human remains to pigs is talked about in the movie Snatch. It turned my stomach to hear them talk about how a pig could polish off a body, bones and all.
I live in BC, and when I first heard the news that Robert “Willy” Pickton (a pig farmer referred to in an above post), was going to be charged with several murders, that movie was the first thing I thought about.
Aggressive behavior isn’t common. Just the same, when you buy a new batch of hogs to fatten, it is a good idea to use caution for a little while before falling down while carrying a basked to feed in the yard.
If the hogs are from your own sows with a known boar, then you know their background and such precautions aren’t really necessary.
So how dangerous are pigs both domesticated and wild?
I’ve heard many accounts in medieval texts of people dying from attacks by wild pigs (boars) and you guys obviously point out the danger of even domisticated pigs.
So ho dangerous are they wqhen compared to other animals? It’s hard to picture the chubby little creature as capable of serious damage, but obviously it is.
Would you rather tangle witha wild pig or a wolf? A gator strikes me as more dangerous given their huge mouth 
Could a wild pig run down and kill a healthy, fit human adult?
If we’re talking a single animal, wolf. More fragile and a lot smaller.
Absolutely. Would it? Not usually, no. They’re not carnivores per se and generally are opportunistic predators at best ( fawns were easy pickings because they instinctively freeze when threatened and rely on camouflage ). I’ve run across wild pigs outdoors before and they have just given me a warning huff and headed out in the other direction. But wild boars are large ( up to 700 lbs for a big male Eurasian Boar ), very sturdy, surprisingly fast, not easily intimidated and armed with razor-sharp tusks. You don’t want to mess around with them if you don’t have a gun ( if you do, I’ll also say that they’re mighty tasty ).
- Tamerlane