I wouldn’t assume any hogs you see in the wild are original wild boar. In the US, they almost certainly aren’t. They’re mostly feral pigs, which are domestic pigs that have been reintroduced into the wild (either recently in the last few decades or when people first got to the Americas). They generally aren’t violent towards humans, but they can be very aggressive under the right circumstances, like being hunted and harried by dogs and people. I wouldn’t count on it being the result of breeding for docility, either. They were bred for food, not for behavior.
They’re the exact same animal, Sus scrofa. The true wild pigs are Eurasian, so the ones in the US are likely accidental or intentional escapees. Yet there seems to be some atavism, cute domestic pig stock will grow tusks and hair.
Though in most cases they are considered invasive, in Hawaii they’ve been there as long as native Hawaiians have been. I don’t know a good justification for eradication there.
The US has native piglike creatures, the javelinas and peccaries.
If you could see my back yard, you’d know one. Over the past few years the population on the Big Island has gotten completely out of control - I’ve counted as many as 8 at a time running around my property, whereas in the early 2000s I never saw any. It’s impossible to have a garden because they’ll eat everything. They’ve completely snouted up the back yard looking for grubs - in the space of a few weeks it went from a lush green area to just dirt.
They’re a menace. I’ve not ever felt threatened for my personal safety, but that probably says more about my ignorance than anything else.
When you are breeding animals to live in confined quarters that need to be controlled and slaughtered, wouldn’t breeding them for docility be expected?
Aggressive pigs will kill each other, try to escape and attack the farmer.
What is Catalina, in Arizona? They’re a stinky pig. Javelina is the normal name in that part of the world (Spanish: more like havalina). That species is the collared peccary, but there are more species south.
No doubt. The big issue is that they are as native as native Hawaiians. But most of the complaint is due to the environmental and financial damage they do. Nobody wants to eliminate imports from Chinaor the Middle East.
I have to agree, in as much as pigs with that level of aggression would be killed and not allowed to breed. That’s not quite the same as breeding specifically for docility, but the end result is partway there.
End directed breeding never really gets into the whys of results though. Like breeding for large size, sometimes you get big muscles due to myostatin mutation, but it could be a lot of domestic animals bred for size simply feel like they are starving regardless of how much they eat. Placid pigs maybe just have no ambition, ha. As long as they’re fed, why go anywhere or cause problems. Starving pigs might get more ambitious to procure food - and maybe a farmer is on a fine line between starving hungry = good for fat pigs, to really starving hungry = farmer looks like food.
There’s just so much you can breed out of a porker. The instinctive need to eat, to mate or to protect young are strong in farm animals. That’s why the farmer keeps the hogzilla male in a strong enclosure. Not only will he run you over he may kill. He will kill piglets and mate every sow in season. And run to the neighbors and cause havoc there. Boar hogs are not nice.
back when this was a big thing 6 or 7 years ago nat geo had a series of specials on it and in one researchers found out that if you let it loose it only takes about 6-8 weeks for a farm pig to physically change into a boar when they let it loose
When they recaught it took roughly the same amount of the time to turn back into a farm pig
Depends on the state. Some states it’s open season. In California they’re tagged, you can still take as many as you want but have to get permission beforehand. In other states, especially those with no pigs or a tiny population, it is illegal to hunt them. The reasoning is that it will encourage intentionally released populations.
