Last night we watched Stranded, a 2003 movie about some people who get marooned on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. At one point a boar chases two boys up a tree, and then continues jumping up and snapping at them like a rabid wolf.
Then in another movie from around the same time, the bad guys killed a victim by throwing him in the pigsty, where a dozen pigs fell on him like so many porcine pirhanas…and devoured him. I think something similar happened in still another film but I don’t remember for sure. It might have been that a murder victim’s body was disposed of by…yes you guessed it…throwing it in the pigsty.
Now I know pigs are omnivorous so they must eat meat sometimes. But do they chase and kill prey? And would presumably well fed farm pigs eagerly pounce on any meat, alive or dead, dropped into their enclosure?
I raised small hogs for a few years. They were bred specifically for their small manageable size and amiable temperament. The largest of them was my boar, who topped out at a tiny 270 lbs. He was as sweet as you could ever expect a boar to be.
I got out of the hog-raising game because I live alone and their innate pushiness for food was unnerving. I always kept a fence or a gate between me and them when letting them in and out of their pen, and I used food to direct their behavior as I wished. Example: I would throw some sweet feed out into the pasture before opening the gate from their pen to make sure they went to the pasture instead of crowding around me. I always carried a pig stick to discourage the crowding and their penchant for nibbling at my feet/legs.
The only time I ever actually panicked during my stint as a hog farmer was when they exploited a weak spot under the hot wire that ran around the bottom of their pen and got out. I had to restring wire during the wettest part of winter, got a leg stuck hard in their wallow area. It took a full 15 minutes to extricate my leg, and during that time I had horrible visions of my pigs running back to me, knocking me fully to the ground and… well, after a time, who knows?
Well fed farm pigs will eagerly pounce on meat, alive or dead. Some boars will eat their own young if not segregated from them, so yes, they will chase and kill prey. Even comparatively docile pigs are nothing more than vehicles for voracious stomachs. They are bred to eat, and that is what they do.
Farm-fed, probably not. Wild or feral, yes, but it’s pretty rare. It usually happens during rutting season.
Boars like to attack from behind, tusking you in the thigh, and they will continue attacking until you no longer present a threat. Once you’re in it with a wild boar, you’re in it until the end–special spears had to be designed for hunting them because they’d push the spear through themselves to get at the person holding it. Boar spears have a cross-piece that prevent that and keeps the animal at spear’s length.
They are mean. Feral pigs will come straight for you. Mr.Wrekker is on a hog hunt as we speak. He tells harrowing tales of happenings in the field. He says to never turn your back on them.
When we were renting a sublet on a place with pigs, we would toss them mice from the traps. Hog wild, yeah, scary. I was stationed in Germany at the time, so Nazi pigs, but still.
Also Deadwood. Seems like some victim of foul play was fed to Wu’s pigs practically once an episode. And speaking of media portrayal of dangerous pigs, my first exposure as a kid to that idea was watching the beginning of The Wizard of Oz.
My mom had a cousin who married a farmer. They had pigs, amongst other livestock. Once, as a young child, I ventured into the pigpen, I don’t know why, those hogs were enormous. The guy came out and saw me in there and hollered at me in an angry, loud voice to get out of there. Later my mom told me he’d not been so angry as scared, since the pigs could be dangerous. My first introduction that animals usually depicted to kids as cute could be…not cute.
I was born and raised on a farm and we raised pigs as well as dairy cows.
Even as a young lad starting at say 10-12 years old, I would go in the pens for feeding and cleaning out the manure. I never had any fears for my safety.
The only time we had to watch out for, was if a sow had given birth in the free pen and we were trying to round up the piglets to move them to a segregated pen.
Are they wild killing machines bent on destroying all in their path? No. Will they attack humans unprovoked? Certainly. In the Middle Ages, pigs attacking children was a-I wouldn’t go so far as to say common-experience, but certainly a real danger. Even today, wild pig attacks are surprisingly frequent, probably more frequent than bear attacks and surprisingly fatal in many instances. Here’s a study of such things.
I actually thought at first that you wrote “My father’s cousin had a pig that was notorious for breaking out his pen and eating the neighbor’s children.” :eek:
I read an alleged historical account from the Medieval ages once that said a pig had eaten a baby alive. The community in their wisdom forced the pig to dress in clothing, put it on trial, and had it at the stand to face accusations and everything. Not sure if it was true or not but said pig was sentenced to death and executed, no word on if the bacon tasted better.
One would assume that pigs grown for food have been bred for docility while pigs in the wild have been bred by natural selection for a more aggressive temperament.
I really don’t know the details, but comparing pigs that have been bred for food to wild boars is probably like comparing two totally different animals.
IDK but dogs have been bred to be our friends and to hunt and live beside us. A big powerful dog can still kill you. A tiny lap dog can hurt you. Just because they are bred domestic pigs doesn’t mean they wouldn’t instinctively kill and eat a person if they were put to the test. Don’t turn your back on one.