I remember as a child being told by my mother of a loose hog which bit off the arm of a young girl as she waited for the school bus. Cautionary tale. Twisted, no? Pig’s tail!
So far, I still don’t see any first-hand accounts of pigs attacking and eating a healthy adult.
I don’t expect you would. Pigs are not generally predators of large, mobile animals. For the most part they take things easy to catch. Weak and injured adult animals sometimes, but usually things like white-tailed deer fawns that instinctively freeze to avoid predators and thus are easy prey for feral hogs who don’t rely much on sight anyway.
Hogs can easily outrun a human. So humans would fall into the “easy to catch” category.
But in general I agree with you. Hogs are more scavengers than predators. Which is why I think literary tales of hogs eating humans are just so much bollocks.
Still, I am trying to keep an open mind. If anyone has an account of hogs attacking and eating a healthy adult, I would be curious to see it.
Well, growing up in farm country and hearing many tales of how dangerous hogs can be to humans it’s never crossed my mind that people would be exagerrating the possibility of a hog killing and eating at least part of a human. Hogs will eat just about anything if they are hungry.
I do know personally of people who have been cornered by an angry hog and needed to be rescued by others who were fortunately there. Their teeth are sharp and their bite is strong.
But your reasonable skeptisicm, Spike, sent me in search of evidence and it appears to be scarce. I did find this one account from the NY Times dated May 27, 1884 about a man in Philadephia who was attacked and killed by a hog who tore open his stomach before he was stopped by others. It would be reasonable to assume the hog would have continued to eat if he had been given the opportunity. A bite to the stomach would be consistent with a scavenger setting about to eat, as opposed to a predator aiming to kill (first) which would probably go for the throat.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B07E5D7173FE533A25754C2A9639C94659FD
It does strike me as odd that I can’t find more cases of farm accidents. Nowadays a man is more likely to be killed by falling in the poisonous lagoon of hawg poopie.
Modern farming ain’t for sissies either.
My apologies. It appears the link won’t work. But I found the article by Googling “man killed by hog.”
It appears that the link above is innoperative. I found the article by Googling “man killed by hog.”
I have found another account of a man who was stabbed being eaten by hogs during John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry:
http://wesclark.com/jw/newby.html
Probably not. Pigs aren’t that speedy, relatively speaking. Wild boars seem to able to do burst speeds of ~15 mph, whereas humans ( Olympic-caliber sprinters, mind you ) have broken 26 mph. And of course over distance there is no contest. Very, very few animals can outrun a well-conditioned human in an endurance contest.
Depends on the tale. Hog eats guy who falls into pig pen and is knocked out, I’d readily accept. Hog guts idiot that came between wild sow and piglets, sure. Hog attacks and eats trapped man with broken leg - unlikely, but remotely possible.
But hog stalks and ambushes/runs down adult person? Yeah, I’d be suspicious.
So the answer to the question would probably be: under the circumstances of hunger and opportunity. Just as a pet cat or dog or fellow human may make a meal out of a human being, as distasteful as that may be to acknowledge.
Wild boars can run 30 mph. (And that is not even an Olympic sprinter boar!) Cite.
Tethered Kite, I grew up on a farm myself, and spend a great part of my childhood roaming around a barnyard full of hogs. They never bothered me at all, and the only warning I ever got was not to pick up a piglet (as its squeal would bring its mother running in a fury).
Nothing in my experience would support the idea of hogs as a serious threat to humans in ordinary circumstances. (Indeed, the biggest threat from our hogs was that they would lean so hard against you in hopes that you would scratch their ears that they might knock you over.) But I remain open to being proven wrong.
He was already dead when the hogs ate him, though. There is no doubt that hogs will consume a human corpse. It has happened frequently in wartime. (Most notoriously perhaps at the battle of Shiloh, during the night between the first and second days of the battle.)
Better one than mine - I concede the point, at least in terms of a short sprint :).
But I still wouldn’t consider humans to fall under the rubric of “easy prey” as I was thinking of the term. I’ve never read that feral hogs typically hunt by running down large animals.
I agree. They don’t. My point was simply that if they had any inclination to kill humans, they could do so without difficulty. They don’t have the inclination. 
Peccaries will run down a hunter, tusk his/her legs until crippled and then kill and partially devour them. (Source = numerous personal anecdotes from tribes in Southeastern Peru)
Think about that story for a minute. How would anyone know what occurred? Did other hunters witness it? If so, were they just standing around while the peccary attacked, killed and ate their friend? Stains credibility doesn’t it?
The alternative is that they didn’t actually witness such a thing, but perhaps found a hunter’s corpse that had been mutilated by a peccary. The rest of the story would be speculation.
Second-or-third-hand anecdotes don’t persuade me. Until I see documented cases, this strikes me as just another urban legend (or in this case, rain forest legend).
What I might believe (if documented) is that a peccary attacked a hunter who had cornered it, and that the hunter, fatally wounded by the attack, might have made a meal of convenience for the peccary. But a peccary going out of its way to seek human prey? I don’t buy that for a minute.
Perhaps the image of a crazed vengeance-bent man-eating peccary is a bit strong, and you are correct that the stories mostly referred to found bodies, but I have seen many hunters with scarred shins and calves and heard them relate how they got the wounds and what they had seen happen to other hunters.
Your second scenario is much more in keeping with those anecdotes, namely that the hunters would be “funneling” the peccary(ies) and either someone would get in front of it by accident or it would turn and charge at someone, who would then run like hell for the nearest tree. As noted above, peccaries are fast. Two Machiguenga related eyewitness accounts to me of a cousin who had been run down and tusked repeatedly by a group of peccaries (first in the legs, then after falling in the head and torso) and then later died “tired” presumably from blood loss and/or infection. The idea of hunters “standing around” is not very applicable, since the hunts usually take place while sprinting through dense understory for prolonged periods.