Nature & Environment

Intelligent hybrid 'super pigs' are starting to invade the United States

By T.K. Randall
February 24, 2023

Image: Hybrid Between Wild and Domestic Pig
Credit: Miguel Tremblay / (PD) Larger and hardier than typical domestic pigs, these brainy and highly resilient hogs were bred by Canadian farmers by combining domestic pigs and wild boars to create a hybrid species capable of withstanding the country's freezing winter temperatures.

The idea worked - perhaps too well - but when demand for the animals dropped around 20 years ago, some farmers chose to release the pigs into the wild and they have been surviving there ever since.

Now they are heading south into the United States and they are proving extremely difficult to get rid of.

"Wild hogs feed on anything," Ryan Brook, leader of the University of Saskatchewan's Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, told Field and Stream. "They gobble up tons and tons of goslings and ducklings in the spring."

"They can take down a whitetail deer, even an adult. Originally, it was like ‘wow, this is something we can hunt.' But it's become clear that they're threatening our whitetail deer, elk, and especially, waterfowl. Not to mention the crop damage."

"The downsides outweigh any benefit wild hogs may have as a huntable species."

As things stand, the pigs have made it into North Dakota and over time, they are likely to multiply and spread across the mainland United States.

Whether or not it will be possible to stop them remains unclear.

Source: Popular Mechanics

Tags: Super Pigs