Invasion of the super pigs? Hybrid species could wreak havoc in the United States
Hordes of Canadian wild beasts dubbed “super pigs,” which have been running amok in the frigid north, are now about to set foot in the United States.
Their arrival could wreak havoc on the ecological balance by menacing our native flora and fauna, wildlife, crops, livestock, pets, cities, and water quality, animal experts warn. That web of effect is sprawling. Anyone could get tangled up.
“The only people who should be worried about this is anyone who lives in North America and eats meat, or eats vegetables, or eats any foods based on grain crops, or spends time outside for any reason,” Ryan Brook, leader of the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, said to Fox News.
The super pigs are a hybrid between classic pink farm pigs and feral boars—with the latter being among the most vicious and fearsome creatures that a human can stumble upon in nature, which should be “avoided at all costs,” according to RestlessBackpacker.com.
The two animals were originally crossbred by Canadian farmers to help their pigs grow fatter and survive the country’s cold winters. But when the market for pork meat dried up in the early 2000s, packs of them were set free (or escaped), and have roamed the western prairies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba ever since.
Now, those pigs are taking their genetically enhanced durability, along with their species’ sharpness of mind, across the border into American territory—apparently starting with North Dakota and Montana, which might be no different from home for them, as they can withstand freezing winds and are able to burrow for warmth in the harshest of climates, even lining their dens with harvested cattail plants for insulation.
According to the Guardian, the pigs are “incredibly intelligent” and also “highly elusive,” capable of tunneling under snow to evade predators. When threatened, they can become nocturnal, traveling only by darkness of nightfall.
The fact that these (unnatural, human-engineered) super pigs hail from a land of ice and snow is problematic, scientists say, because according to an ecogeographical principle called Bergmann’s rule, the colder an environment is, the bigger a specimen will be. And Canada’s super pigs are massive. The heaviest one ever discovered reportedly weighed over 660 pounds. Also worth noting: At that size, wherever the pigs go, they will need to eat. A lot.
“Wild hogs feed on anything. They gobble up tons and tons of goslings and ducklings in the spring. They can take down a whitetail deer, even an adult,” Brook told Field & Stream magazine last month. “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.”
Is this punishment for the inhumanity of factory farming? An Orwellian uprising? The wrath of God? Or even . . . our own fault? Maybe, but experts are now asking citizens to report pigs spotted in the wild on websites such as Squeal on Pigs. Meanwhile, they say our best hope is to trap a so-called “Judas pig”—one lone pig that can be outfitted with a GPS collar, who then leads hunting officials to the rest of the herd.
May the odds be in our favor.
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