Having seem some very large wild boar, I think it would only be an even fight at best between a 50-75 kg American Cougar/Panther/Mountain Lion and a big mean old boar weighing100-150kg. Wild boar have a shield that can be a couple of inches thick that covers their internal organs. Not to say that they don’t predate boar and wild pigs (I’ve seen it in Florida) Only that it’s not as lopsided a fight as you might suspect. I suspect they would tend to prey on lesser fighters given the opportunity.
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We don’t know who struck first, us or the hogs.
We do know it was us who scorched the sky.
At the time experts thought the pigs couldn’t thrive in cold climates.
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This has been tried. The Reply-All episode is really worth a listen. You have to understand how fast these things breed. We literally cannot shoot them fast enough. They’ve shrugged off multiple organized mass extermination campaigns of all sorts. It’s quite a problem.
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#NotAllWolves
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What I really don’t understand is how fewer humans have managed to hunt the passenger pigeon into extinction over 100 years ago, with decidedly more primitive technology.
There are more people today, with vastly superior technology, and feral hogs are an issue. What?
People with the firearms fixations:
THIS IS YOUR CHANCE. THIS IS WHY YOU SAID YOU NEEDED THAT AR-15. GO FUCKING DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
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Passenger pigeons were a cheap source of meat and were commercialized, with hundreds of hunters travelling the country to harvest birds full time. Additionally an amateur could take down dozens of birds with a single shotgun blast at a roost. The juveniles were preferred for their meat leading to many birds dying before breeding age. Passenger pigeons also didnt breed at the same rate that hogs do. Finally, deforestation caused a loss of habitat. And angry pigeons weren’t much of a threat to humans.
So to apply this to wild hogs, one would need to have a nationwide market that sold hog meat for pennies per pound, hire hundreds of people to hunt them year round, somehow encourage the hogs to stay in Sounders of 30-50 hogs where they can be easily culled with a cannon shot, and chop down the forests that the hogs live in. Even then, you probably wouldn’t succeed.
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Agreed. The only thing that stops a bad pig with a gun is a good pig with a gun!
Support the right to arm boars!
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He Man seemed to do ok.
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Sounds like a job for pig birth control (I doubt abstinence will work).
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Honestly, if the theory of ‘environmental protection through tort law’ actually worked even slightly in the real world this sort of stunt would seem like it would be pretty high on the list of things that would get you sued into the ground.
It’s a surprise to nobody that the pigs will escape from any remotely ‘wild’ enclosure, fences get worn and pigs can dig a bit; and once out they will breed and they will spread and they will wreak havoc on a variety of things that the neighbors might want to do with their property.
I’m not holding my breath; but by any sane standard doing this would put you on the hook for a world of liability even in relatively lawless jurisdictions; and be forbidden ahead of time specifically because it’s 100% assured to go poorly in the ones that haven’t abandoned the concept of regulation yet.
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I’d be curious to know if anyone has had a crack at them with immunocontraceptives. Unfortunately “Porcine zona pellucida” is a very popular source of antigens for building immuncontraceptives, so that’s chaffing up the search results for use of immunocontraceptives against pigs rather than from them.
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According to the Reply-All story, yes, some mass-sterilizations and the like have been tried, but the scale is the problem. The rate at which they reproduce is so high that if your treatment missed even a few hogs in a given area, the problem will be back in a few years. Plus they migrate with startling efficiency so it would have to be some sort of massive simultaneous continent-wide effort.
Perhaps something like a gene drive is on the table though, as is currently being tested to wipe out mosquitoes once and for all (and good riddance).
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Hey, they breed fast too ya know.
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I’m constantly amazed by how relaxed the US still is as a whole about introducing potentially invasive species. (It seems like officials are mainly reactive to specific known threats once they start doing a ton of damage to particular crops, otherwise there’s not much concern on even a governmental level.) I’m also unclear how openly people are transporting feral hogs, and whether they’re even attempting to contain them, or just secretly releasing them in unconstrained areas without much expectation they’re going to stick around, in the most reckless way possible.
The whole thing is crazy and potentially very hard/impossible to litigate even if that did work (but as you say…).
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Considering how we’ve treated them to date, I think we’re in for some hard times. Macon, it’s what’s for breakfast.
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Beware of the boars!
It has happened before in many places!
Run to the hills!
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I’ve heard these feral pigs are highly intelligent: for instance, they speak Latin.
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