The Three Little (Feral) Pigs

 


It is time we confront the fact that “they" have been lying to us our entire lives…
For the one among us who can actually stomach the stream-of-jackshit that is my Twitter feed saw this unfolding live in my brain this morning:



I would say “don’t ask me why I am thinking about the Three Little Pigs at 11am on a Sunday morning, but I will voluntarily offer that I went to a children’s play of Little Red Riding Hood on Saturday and the idea of the pigs kinda sat in my brain from about 3pm on.
It really is the curse of a creative mind.


Anyway, I continued to stew on this even as I did my normal Saturday evening routine of “not much” and came to the above conclusion knowing what we know about pigs and wolves.
I say “we” because I know it and now you’re about to as well…



Let us begin with some simple facts, here


  1. Pigs are genetically superior to wolves…
    Their outcome in the wild bears this out.  We tend to think of pigs as the clumsy and cutesy little fat guys y’all (not me; I haven’t eaten it in 24 years) eat for breakfast and play with on the farm.  What y’all DON’T realize, though, is that “cutesy little fat guy” was only raised to SIX MONTHS IN AGE before his matriculation to your plate began.  If allowed to live out life to full potential, he could grow to 400+ pounds and possibly have tusks.  It has been said that pigs are the most-easily adapted animal to go from domestication to ferality we’ve ever seen, they’re SMART and resilient, often and sometimes violently resistant to human activity once feral.  Robert Baratheon being gored by a boar hog he was attempting to hunt on Game of Thrones was not a stretch of realism in the least.


  1. (Again) Pigs are genetically superior to wolves…
    We all know full well and first hand that human activity has near-mortally ended wolves as we know them.  Domestication has created the quickest evolution (or, as it were, devolution) of a species from wild wolves to domestic — or even WILD – dogs we have ever seen.  Once a mighty pack animal feared where they ranged, now three domestic-ass wimps in my house who get bad tummies when the store doesn’t have my normal brand of their kibble.


Somebody say something about “range”? Let’s have a little look into the range of the gray wolf worldwide…


… now compare that with the native and introduced range of the wild boar:


(Phlip note: given what we know about cats and rabbits in Australia, I am surprised that ten hogs hasn’t spawned enough of a wave to ruin the entire island)

I say that to say this…
Wolves are QUITE sensitive to encroachment upon their habitat, whereas pigs have learned to be the line-steppers.  This information, considering again the fact that a wolf is expected, at its most exceptional, to be half the physical size of a full-grown feral hog.  Factor in that the hog can attain a footspeed of 25-30mph at that size and this has gotten interesting.


This is not to take away from the wolf’s status as an apex predator, so much as to say that one hog – let alone three - is not the smoke that a “big bad wolf” would likely walk away the victor of should he be so dumb as to undertake such a task.

So yes, they lied to us… Only way a “big bad wolf” would encounter “three little pigs” is on a farm.  Real-world examples of this actually having happened is precisely why wolves are on endangered species lists, because farms have these things called farmers and farmers have these things called rifles.  Meanwhile, in the wild and in spite of not often sharing native habitat ranges, if one wolf takes on one pig he is more than liklely taking on a BUNCH of them and it ain’t gonna go so pretty.

If I had been the one to write those fairy tales knowing what I know now I would have severely ruined some childhoods when the wolf huffed and puffed and blew the house down, only to be overpowered and then eaten by three now-pissed-off hogs.  It’d have been more suited for the more macabre tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Comments

The Iconoclast said…
How in the fuck do you sleep at night?!

Popular posts from this blog

True Story©... The Treasure Hunt Pt. III

AMERICAN (bout damn time) Automotive Pr0ns -- SSC Ultimate Aero TT