The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs

  • Lyall Watson
Profile: 2004. 278 pp. £16.99, $24.95 1588342166 1861977360 | ISBN: 1-588-34216-6

Wild pigs have adapted to live in many parts of the world, from the Arizona desert to the Asian rainforest. The hairless, wrinkly babirusa, which has strange tusks that grow out of the top of its snout, is the one pig species that cannot breed with others, owing to a chromosomal abnormality. The highly social white-lipped peccaries, from South America, spend hours grooming and smearing the stinking product of their scent glands on each other. Lyall Watson's narrative provides a detailed natural history of both the behaviour and the biology of these and other pigs.

The author is intimately involved with the animals he describes. He grew up in Africa and spent his childhood in the bush. He had a Zulu companion who taught him which snakes are dangerous and which are safe. Watson explains how pigs are more gregarious than the ungulates that graze the plains. The social life of pigs is more like that of primates than cattle or sheep.

Pigs will eat just about anything. Watson maintains that this lack of specialization makes the pig more curious about its environment and less afraid of new things than animals with more specialized diets. In the porcine brain there are greater associative areas in the cortex, which may make pigs more willing to approach new things. In my own work, it was interesting to compare the behaviour of domestic pigs with that of hand-raised antelope. If a paper bag is thrown in the pen, the pigs will instantly approach and explore, whereas the antelope instantly flee. Antelope run away first, and look and explore later.

Watson's aim for The Whole Hog is to bring together all the information about wild and domestic pigs. He did a splendid job with the wild pigs, but the section on modern domestic pigs is weak. There are two odd omissions. The section on the pork industry does not discuss the animal-welfare controversies surrounding industrial-scale pig farms. And there is excellent information on the need to preserve the different species of wild pig, but no discussion of the dangers of a few large breeding companies narrowing the genetic diversity of domestic pigs.

At the end of the book, Watson challenges the reader with the question of whether animals can think and have consciousness. My own view, as a person with autism, is that language is not required for thinking, because I think in pictures instead of words. Maybe animals think in associations of sensory-based memories?