Loose Pig Disrupts Traffic and Neighborhoods in Corpus Christi

Random people in Corpus Christi, Texas helped animal control catch a loose pig on Monday. They'd been trying to catch it since Sunday morning, but it kept getting away.  People driving by saw them chasing it and joined in.

The pig eventually ran out of steam and gave up. They're trying to track down the owner. If no one comes forward, they'll put the pig up for adoption.

I love like the pig is smiling like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar when the officers were taking her away!

It's always been amazing to me how quickly a domesticated pig can turn feral too.

Domestic pigs can quickly revert to wild pigs. Although the domestic pig as we know it today took hundreds of years to breed, just a few months in the wild is enough to make a domestic pig turn feral. It will grow tusks, thick hair, and become more aggressive.

Feral hogs are a growing problem here in Texas.

I could almost admire these descendants of abandoned domesticated pigs for their tenacity—their ability to survive and thrive—if they were not wreaking havoc everywhere they go.

Recently, they destroyed a city park- leaving city officials no choice but to shell out $150,000 in repairs.

You can read more about that story here.

According to this post on Reddit from user KadabraJuices:

A creatures phenotype (physical manifestation) is dictated by its genetic code. There are actually different ways in which genetic code will be expressed depending on the environment that the creature finds itself; this phenomenon is called epigenetics. There is another phenomenon called neoteny in which creatures retain juvenile characteristics depending on their environment, and will quickly mature given certain conditions.

 

So just as an example to illustrate the point, say that a pig is in a farm and is fed and shielded from predators. The chemical profile of this pig might show low levels of testosterone because there had not been any circumstances that would have precipitated the production of excess testosterone. When the pig is let out into the wild, it is suddenly in danger of predators and starved of nutrients, so the relevant chemical cascades kick in which will be conducive to its survival, and these may actually change the way it physically appears (testosterone --> greater hair production, etc).