The Unexpected Genius of Pigs. Matt Whyman
human settlements dating back about 10,000 years ago for signs that wild boar were on their way towards domestication,’ the Professor begins. ‘It’s likely that an association developed in terms of co-location, and that the boar ventured into the settlements because they were scavenging. As omnivores there would be things that they were interested in, like food that people had left. And I imagine those people looked at the boar and had ideas of their own,’ he adds with a grin. ‘There’s plenty of information available to help us calculate when this happened, but the fact is we don’t really know how the pig was first domesticated.’ The Professor considers me through his glasses for a moment. ‘You can always make up a story about it.’
The origin of the species
By and large, a pig is a docile and benign beast. There are times when it’s best to steer clear, as we’ll discover, but with some understanding they’re generally easy to read. Instinctively, I think, before reaching out to scratch a flank or rub behind an ear, we’ll talk to them. There is something about pigs that always prompts us to do this. They respond to human voices, just as we respond to them. We speak very different languages, but the tone of both a grunt and our greeting seems to effortlessly cross the divide.
The wild boar, on the other hand, is a very different creature. Visiting the outskirts of Bucharest on a work trip recently, I decided to use some free time to go for a run. I have always been a runner (apart from the period when Butch and Roxi devoured my time). I find it helps to clear my head if I’ve been writing all day, and basically serves both my mental and physical health. That day, unfamiliar with the city, I planned a route on Google Maps. I had assumed I could plot a circuit that might take in a park with a lake and suchlike. I just hadn’t realised that this quarter of the Romanian capital contained a vast swathe of dense forest. From above, this dark and ragged expanse looked completely out of keeping with the grid of avenues surrounding it, one of which I would have to follow to pick up the trail path. Aware that stray dogs roamed the streets, I asked at the hotel reception if it would be wise.
‘No problem,’ the receptionist told me. ‘The dogs are harmless if you leave them alone, but in the forest you must watch out for the boar.’ Her English, and my non-existent Romanian, didn’t allow for finding out more. I just thanked her, smiled, and headed outside, where exhaust-stained snow had been shovelled to each side of the avenue.
Despite being dressed in technical shorts and a luminous Lycra top, with the receptionist’s warning in mind I felt like an age-old character from Grimms’ Fairy Tales. All the way to the forest, no more than a mile at most, I dwelled on what I might face. I passed lone street dogs that paid me no attention, and a Rottweiler behind a fence that chased alongside me for a while. It was noisy, but I wasn’t alarmed. We see dogs of every temperament. They live among us, unlike the animal I had been warned about, and as I approached the trailhead I felt as if I was leaving my world and entering one that belonged to them.
I have never seen a wild boar for real. I know they’re beginning to populate pockets of the UK once more, but I still think of them as a livestock version of the Loch Ness Monster. Having become hunted into extinction in the seventeenth century, their quiet reappearance in forested regions from Scotland to the south coast of England is largely believed to have begun in the 1980s as a result of escapes from captivity. Today, it’s estimated that 4,000 wild boar could be at large in the British countryside. It may not sound like many, but an adult male can weigh in at 150kg of muscle and tusk, and is unlikely to turn tail if startled, in the manner of a rabbit or deer. In rural parts of Europe, however, especially to the East, the wild boar is commonplace, and this was uppermost in my mind on leaving the avenue behind and heading deep into the trail.
With my running shoes crunching through the snow and the low sun hanging behind the trees, I found myself becoming all eyes and ears. The only thing I knew about wild boar was that as territorial creatures they could be aggressive when disturbed, and here I was breezing through their kingdom without a pass. I admit to feeling some apprehension, seeing movement in the thickets when there was none, and I picked up my pace along with my heart rate on registering the sound of something scramble away. When I heard a distant but guttural snort my nerve deserted me completely. In my mind, I faced imminent attack by a beast that suddenly embodied my greatest fears. As casually as I could, I turned and ran back the way I had come.
‘You were lucky,’ the receptionist told me when I reported the experience on my return. I am pretty sure she was simply telling me what I needed to hear. There was every chance that I had just been startled by my own shadow, but as a hotel guest I hadn’t paid to be ridiculed. Nevertheless, I returned to my room with a renewed sense that we are hardwired to be wary of wild boar. Like the bear, it’s a creature that we consider to exist across a divide – one that represents danger, should we venture far from home.
The crossing
With no nice hotels to hide out in, or room service to cater for their needs, our ancestors were right to be wary of the bear and the boar when they ventured into the woods and forests. After all, these creatures had a significant advantage in their domain: they would be aware of your presence before you saw them, which would be sure to unsettle anyone but the hunter. So they were best left alone.
And yet the wild boar viewed the world beyond their own through different eyes. Unlike the bear, the boar ventured out from their kingdom and into ours. By extension, they duly broke the spell between man and beast. I like to think they did so with some trepidation, crossing the line under the cover of night to claim the scraps that had been discarded on the outskirts. In a sense, they had found a way into human life that presented no threat. If anything, by clearing the ground of waste that would otherwise attract vermin, these pioneering forebears of the common pig offered something back, and thereby laid the blueprint for a relationship that would thrive.
‘The boar really is quite a wild animal,’ Professor Mendl points out when considering how we took things to another level on discovering a taste for the meat. ‘Some would have been bolder than others, and willing to interact with people, and so the selection and breeding process would have been gradual.’
At one with the pig
Studying fossils, it’s possible to look back through time and see the pig evolve as humans moved from foraging to farming. For the swineherds through the ages, however, the emergence of the docile beast from its wild ancestor would have been imperceptible. Every generation continued the work of the last, slowly shaping form and nature through one century and on to the next. The tail coiled as the skull broadened and the nose flattened into a snout. The dark bristles softened and yielded to a pink and hairless skin, while the ferocity and fury that defined a wild boar under fire burned out to reveal the gentle soul we recognise today.
In many ways, the pig allowed itself to become domesticated in order to earn a place in our world. In changing itself for ever, and submitting to our needs, it brought us closer together.
Throughout the ages, our relationship has become ever more tightly intertwined. The pig assumes the final position in the Chinese zodiac, having shown up last when Jade the Emperor called a gathering of animals. In this story, the pig is celebrated for its honesty and determination, having admitted it fell asleep along the way, and yet it’s believed this might also be where it picked up a reputation for being lazy.
Other areas of folklore see the pig ascribed with different qualities. In Ancient Egypt, the pig was associated with Set, god of storms and disorder, and by Native Americans as a herald of rain; while the Celts considered it to be an icon of fertility and abundance. Pigs have impacted on religion, most notably in being unfit for consumption under laws of both Islam and Judaism. Buddhism portrays a deity called Marici as a beautiful woman in the lotus position astride seven sows, and the New Testament tells the story of the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac, in which Jesus cured a man possessed by casting the evil spirits into a herd of swine.
Across the world, from one culture to another, pigs have come to represent extremes of the human spirit, from sloth, gluttony and dirtiness to irrepressibility and sheer lust for life. There is no middle ground. Love or loathe the common pig, it has made its presence known.
Today, it is believed that the world pig