pig

Photo by: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons With the approach of summer, a timely study was published in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology on whether inflammation plays a role in heat stress-related complications in muscles. Heat stress is a major problem in the livestock industry. In the United States alone it is reportedly associated with a loss of approximately $158 billion annually in the swine industry. To cool off, swine seek shade and often mud baths (which mimic sweating by helping the animals cool off through…

Late last week you might have seen headlines that went something like this: "Pampered pigs 'feel optimistic'" or, this: "Can you ask a pig if his glass is half full?" or, "Pigs have feelings, too (and they prefer a bit of luxury)" The headlines came, respectively, from BBC News, EurekAlert, and the Daily Mail. This sounded pretty fishy to me. Optimism or pessimism requires a certain amount of introspection and future awareness. Without a meaningful sense of the future, optimism doesn't mean very much. I don't know much about cognition in pigs (and, for that matter, there hasn't been a ton of…

Kunekune pigs are being trained by the US Navy to hunt out and disarm undersea anti-ship mines. Or that might be dolphins. The documentation is unclear.

Dude Kingsford Goes to the Beach - video powered by Metacafe via CMYKaboom!

We have no idea! Maybe from the British? But that hasn't stopped well over 100 people from asking us to sell them a tiny piglet in the comments section of this months old post. Now we have video. Anyone want to take over/under bets on how many people ask us to sell them a porker in the comments of this post? Zooillogix - for all of your smallish rat-pig needs.

That'll do pig. That'll do... Thanks once again to Bill K.

Oh good God. We are reprinting this article in its entirety from the Orange News because it is just too good. Check it! Curious locals flocked to the home of owner Feng Changlin after news of the piglet spread in Fengzhang village, Xiping township. "It's hideous. No one will be willing to buy it, and it scares the family to even look at it!" Feng told Oriental Today. He says the piglet looks just like a monkey, with two thin lips, a small nose and two big eyes. Its rear legs are also much longer than its forelegs, causing it to jump instead of walk. Feng's wife said the monkey-faced piglet…

Via the awesome i&o blog, we bring you Cinders, a pig with mysphobia - a fear of dirt. The porker's owners, Debbie and Andrew Keeble, pig farmers and sausage makers in North Yorkshire England, had never seen anything like it. The tiny piglet would cower and shake in the grass at the edge of the mud pit while his siblings gallivanted about in the filth like proper British pigs. The family's five year old daughter suggested putting her Paddington Bear boots on the pig to overcome its fear and it seems to have worked. Zooillogix was skeptical that one could actually diagnose a piglet with…

Via the Kangatron via Neatorama...

After our miniature pigs post last week, an astute Zooillogix reader reminded us that there already are mini-pigs native to India. Weighing only about 10-20lbs, the Pygmy Hog is critically endangered with less than two hundred thought to be left in the wild. Once native to India, Bhutan and Nepal, these little guys were thought extinct from the 1950s-60s, until a small population was discovered. They can now be found only in the northwest Assam region in India. The pygmy hog is notable as it is the only surviving member of the genus Porcula - which would make an awesome bad horror movie…

The smartest person in England has bred a new kind of pet pig, one that fits in the palm of your hand! Chris Murray's Pennywell Miniature pigs recently gave birth to eight piglets at his farm in Devon. According to this article on abcnews.com, Murray wanted a kind of pig "that children can enjoy giving...a cuddle." Hmm....creepy. This is where the meat for those tiny little sandwiches they serve at tea time comes from... Anyhoo, Murray is trying to sell them in pairs so they always have a companion and claims that they are easy to house train. He just sold a couple to some British celebrity…

You might not normally think of them as artodactyls, but suids (i.e. pigs and their relatives) are another major family grouping within the order. Pictured above is one representative from Africa, the Red River Hog (Potamochoerus porcus), which lives in large groups of between 4 and 20 or so as Leopards (Panthera pardus) sometimes crave bacon. Commonly, it's often called the "Bush Pig" but shouldn't be confused with the actual Bushpig, Potamochoerus larvatus, another social swine from Africa.