50 Fun Facts About Pig

What is the scientific name of the domestic pig?

The domestic pig is Sus domesticus; many authorities instead classify it as Sus scrofa domesticus, a subspecies of the Eurasian wild boar from which every breed descends.

Domestication happened independently twice in the Neolithic: in China and where else?

Pigs were domesticated separately in China and the Near East about 9,000 years ago; herds that later reached Europe interbred heavily with local wild boar yet kept their domesticated traits.

How many teeth does an adult pig have?

An adult pig has 44 teeth: the rear molars crush food, and in males the canines keep growing into tusks that sharpen against each other.

What strengthens a pig's snout, letting it dig through hard soil?

A special prenasal bone, the os rostrale, stiffens the snout for rooting; the snout is also an acute sense organ that locates food buried well out of sight.

Why do pigs wallow in mud on hot days?

Wallowing cools pigs down by evaporation: their sweat glands are limited to the snout and they pant poorly, so drying mud does the work skin cannot.

Which breed is unusual for having a woolly coat?

The Mangalitsa, a Hungarian lard breed, grows a thick curly fleece-like coat; most pigs carry only sparse bristles.

How many hoofed toes does a pig have on each foot?

Each foot has four hoofed toes: the two big central toes carry the weight and the outer pair only touch down when the ground is soft.

Which country is the world's largest producer of pork?

China is the world's largest pork producer, ahead of the European Union and the United States; it raises roughly half of the world's pigs.

Roughly how many pigs are raised worldwide each year?

Roughly 1.5 billion pigs are raised and slaughtered worldwide each year, yielding some 120 million tonnes of pork.

Which meat does pork trail as the world's most commonly eaten?

Poultry overtook pork as the world's most-eaten meat in the late 2010s, pushing pork into second place ahead of beef.

What is the two-part scientific name of the wild boar, ancestor of the domestic pig?

Sus scrofa, the Eurasian wild boar, was named by Linnaeus in 1758 and is the ancestor of every domestic pig breed.

In a wild boar's two-part scientific name, what does the second word mean in Latin?

Scrofa is Latin for a breeding sow; the English word sow comes from Old English sugu and is related to Latin sus and Ancient Greek hus.

Across most of its Eurasian range, which predator is the wild boar's main hunter?

The wolf; in the Far East that role passes to the tiger, and on the Lesser Sunda Islands to the Komodo dragon.

How is wild boar society organised?

Wild boar live in matriarchal groups called sounders, led by an old female; fully grown males live alone outside the breeding season, which is why a lone boar is the dangerous one to meet.

Which country banned truffle hunting with pigs in 1985 because their rooting damaged the fungus?

Italy banned truffle hunting with pigs in 1985 because their rooting damaged the fungus's underground mycelium; trained dogs, usually the Lagotto Romagnolo, replaced them.

Which breed became a short-lived American pet fad after arriving from Canada in the mid-1980s?

The pot-bellied pig, imported from Vietnam to Canada in 1985, became a US pet craze; many were not purebred, and buyers expecting a lapdog-sized animal watched it grow to considerable size.

Which position does the Pig hold in the twelve-animal cycle of the Chinese zodiac?

The Pig is twelfth and last in the cycle; in the Great Race legend it arrived behind the Dog after stopping to eat and nap. Pig years include 1995, 2007 and 2019.

Five versions of the Chinese zodiac Pig exist, one named for each of what?

The Chinese elements, Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth; they correspond to the Heavenly Stems, which is why the same animal year feels different every sixty years.

In which country were coin-holding pig figures revered as good luck, popularizing the piggy bank?

Germany, where the pig is a traditional good-luck symbol (Glücksschwein); its oldest surviving piggy bank, from 13th-century Thuringia, turned up during construction work.

The earliest known pig-shaped money boxes, made in the Majapahit era, come from which island?

Java: terracotta boar-shaped money boxes of the Majapahit era (13th–15th centuries) are the earliest known piggy banks; the Javanese word celengan comes from celeng, wild boar.

In the fable of the three little pigs, which material defeats the wolf?

Bricks: the third pig's brick house withstands the wolf's huffing; in older printed versions the wolf then comes down the chimney, lands in a pot of boiling water and is eaten.

The earliest published version of that tale, from 1853 Dartmoor, starred which creatures instead?

The 1853 Dartmoor version starred three pixies and a fox; the familiar pig version reached print through Joseph Jacobs's English Fairy Tales of 1890, which credited nursery-rhyme collector James Halliwell.

Walt Disney's 1933 Silly Symphony gave the trio names. Which one built in brick?

The cartoon softened the ending: the wolf merely burns himself and runs off, rather than being boiled and eaten.

Who wrote Charlotte's Web, published in 1952?

E. B. White; Garth Williams illustrated it, and the book appeared through Harper & Brothers on 15 October that year.

What kind of creature is Charlotte in that story?

Charlotte A. Cavatica is a barn spider (Araneus cavaticus) whose written messages persuade the farmer to spare Wilbur from slaughter.

Which two words appear first in that famous web?

'Some Pig' is the first message; Terrific, Radiant and Humble follow, each buying the runt another few weeks of life.

Which of Fern's relatives buys Wilbur and keeps him in the barn where he meets Charlotte?

Homer Zuckerman, Fern's uncle, buys Wilbur for six dollars and keeps him in his barn, where Charlotte's web messages later make the pig famous.

The 1995 film Babe was adapted from which novel?

Dick King-Smith published it in 1983; the screen version mixed real animals with animatronic puppets.

In which country was Babe filmed?

Australia: the farm scenes were shot at Robertson, New South Wales, in 1994, a year before release.

How many Academy Award nominations did Babe collect?

Babe earned seven nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won for Visual Effects, unusual company for a talking-animal comedy.

What is the title of the 1998 sequel?

Babe: Pig in the City; most of the cast returned, but it landed far less well with critics and audiences than the original.

Which song does Farmer Hoggett sing and dance to when Babe stops eating?

'If I Had Words', set to the tune of Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony, restores the piglet's faith in Hoggett just in time for the sheepdog trial that ends the film.

Which puppeteer performed Miss Piggy from 1976 to 2002?

Frank Oz performed her from 1976 to 2002, with Eric Jacobson taking over; the character had already debuted in a 1974 Herb Alpert TV special.

Which martial art does the Muppets' Miss Piggy practise, usually on Kermit, complete with a shouted 'hi-yah'?

Karate; the chop usually lands on Kermit, and Frank Oz described the character as a truck driver who wanted to be a woman.

Which institution honoured Miss Piggy in 2015 for her cultural contribution?

The Brooklyn Museum's Sackler Center gave Miss Piggy its 2015 First Award, presented by Gloria Steinem; TV Guide had already ranked her 23rd among the 50 greatest television stars.

Peppa Pig first aired in which year?

Peppa Pig premiered on 31 May 2004 on Channel 5 in the UK; each episode runs about five minutes.

Which company bought Peppa Pig's owner, Entertainment One, for about US$3.8 billion in 2019?

Hasbro bought Entertainment One, Peppa Pig's owner, for about US$3.8 billion in a deal announced in August 2019, largely to own the little pig outright.

How old was Harley Bird when she began voicing Peppa?

Harley Bird was five when she took over Peppa's voice in 2007; she kept the role until 2020, winning a BAFTA Children's Award in 2011.

Who narrates Peppa Pig, sighing 'Oh, dear' when things go wrong?

John Sparkes, the Welsh comedian, narrates every episode; most end the same way, with every character rolling onto their backs laughing.

Which pig rules the farm in George Orwell's 1945 novella?

Napoleon, a Berkshire boar modelled on Stalin, rules the farm; Orwell wrote the book in 1943–44, when Britain was allied with the Soviet Union and publishers wanted nothing to do with it.

What subtitle did Orwell originally give Animal Farm?

'A Fairy Story' was the original subtitle; American publishers dropped it for the 1946 edition, and it has drifted in and out of print ever since.

What is the average gestation period of a pig?

Gestation averages about 114 days, usually given as 112 to 120 days ('three months, three weeks, three days'); piglets are born with sharp teeth and quickly fight for the front teats.

What is a female pig called before she has had her first litter?

A gilt is a female pig that has not yet farrowed; once she has produced a litter she is called a sow, and a castrated male is a barrow.

Which giant pig weighed a record 1,157 kg (2,551 lb) and stood 1.5 m at the shoulder?

Big Bill, a Poland China boar from Jackson, Tennessee, reached 1,157 kg in 1933; ordinary adult pigs weigh between 140 and 300 kg.

Pigs share with mongooses, honey badgers and hedgehogs a receptor mutation protecting them from what?

Snake venom: each species carries a different change to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that stops the alpha-neurotoxins in cobra-type venom from binding.

Roughly how wide is a pig's panoramic field of vision?

About 310 degrees of panoramic vision; binocular overlap covers only 35 to 50 degrees, and pigs are thought to lack eye accommodation.

Pigs have how many genes for smell receptors, slightly more than dogs?

Pigs have 1,113 functional olfactory receptor genes against 1,094 in dogs; they identify one another by smell rather than sight and are trained in Europe to find truffles.

What is the smallest known pig breed, weighing around 26 kg as an adult?

The Göttingen minipig, bred at the University of Göttingen from the 1960s for laboratory use, is the smallest recognised pig breed; around 600 pig breeds exist worldwide.

In which year was a gene-edited pig kidney first attached to a brain-dead human patient?

In September 2021 surgeons at NYU Langone attached a gene-edited pig kidney to a brain-dead patient; the donor pig lacked alpha-gal, a sugar the human immune system attacks.

Pigs were the most successful Spanish-introduced animal on which southern Chilean archipelago?

On Chiloé, pigs thrived on shellfish and algae exposed by the archipelago's large tides, making them the most successful animal the Spanish introduced there.