Pig

About the Pig

A domestic pig, photographed on a farm rather than in the wild - worth saying plainly, because Texas is full of feral hogs and the two are easy to confuse in a photograph. Domestic pigs are typically pale or pink, heavy-bodied, thin-haired, and calm around people. A feral hog is dark and coarsely bristled, narrower through the shoulders, with a longer snout and visible tusks, and it will not stand still for anyone.

Pigs are among the most intelligent domestic animals, comfortably ahead of dogs on most measures of problem-solving, and they are far cleaner than their reputation allows. Given room they keep their sleeping area well away from where they dung. They wallow because they cannot sweat - mud is a cooling system and a sunscreen at once, not a preference for filth.

They root with the flat disc of the snout, which is reinforced with its own small bone and is one of the most sensitive organs in any farm animal, and they use it to find food several inches underground.

Every domestic pig descends from the wild boar, Sus scrofa, domesticated independently in Europe and Asia thousands of years ago. The feral hogs that now cause so much damage across Texas are a mix of escaped domestic stock and Eurasian wild boar released for hunting.