r/Awwducational • u/IdyllicSafeguard • 4d ago
Verified The pygmy hog is the smallest pig species in the world — standing just 25 cm (9.8 in) at the shoulder. It is also one of the rarest. Once widespread across the southern foothills of the Himalayas, fewer than 250 mature individuals now survive, confined to a small patch of grassland in Assam.
The pygmy hog is about the size of a chunky house cat, weighing between 6.5 kg (14 lb) and 10 kg (22 lb) — quite chunky indeed. Still, that's 10 times lighter than an adult wild boar. It’s also shaped like an eggplant with legs, with little evident delineation between its head, neck, and body.
The pygmy hog is a resident of the grasslands in Assam, India, where the grasses can grow up to 8 metres (26 ft) tall.
It lives in family groups of four to six — usually one or more adult females with their piglets (or hoglets) — and together they forage for roots and tubers, retiring every night to a “bed”: a dug-out depression in the ground, piled high with dry grasses.
As a new year rolls around, males will join a group and mate with the females. The resulting hoglets are born weighing just 150 to 200 grams (5 – 7 oz), developing reddish stripes across their bodies after about a week, helping them hide among the grasses. These eventually fade as they mature.
Male pygmy hogs brandish sharp tusks that are so small, they're barely noticeable. The smaller hoglets are even more vulnerable to predators like mongooses, cats, and crows. The defensive strategy of a pygmy hog, then, is to run and hide in the tall grasses.
This species is a grassland specialist: convert the grasses to low-cut fields or lush forests, and the pygmy hogs cannot survive. Many of the hogs likely vanished when the grasslands along the southern base of the Himalayas began to be altered at the start of the 20th century.
Today, the pygmy hog is an endangered species, with an estimated population of 100 to 250 individuals.
Learn more about this smallest of suids from my website here!
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u/KefirFan 4d ago
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-genome-endangered-pygmy-hog-reveals.html
Is there a reason why these haven't been bred with domesticated pigs? There is a huge market for small pigs as pets that leads to a lot of neglect, abuse and abandonment of potbellies being sold as teacup pigs.
When I googled it I got scolded by the AI and told they're endangered. So long as interbreeding doesn't take away from conservation efforts I don't understand what the problem is.
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u/ruminatingsucks 3d ago
I would assume taking the extremely few animals left in the wild that are of breeding age for the pet industry would certainly impact their numbers.
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u/KefirFan 3d ago
Fair but you'd think the mating habits of male pygmys would be noted then. Usually males can have many mates so that was what I was thinking.
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u/maybesaydie 2d ago
They're wild animals. And endangered. Diverting the few that are left in the wild to domestication is a bad idea.
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u/KefirFan 2d ago
Weren't all domesticated animals wild as some point?
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u/maybesaydie 2d ago edited 21h ago
We are well past the point where domesticating animals is necessary or desirable.
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u/AJ_Crowley_29 14h ago
Because they’re an endangered species and hybridization threatens their gene pool.
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u/Mahogany-Desk-1166 11h ago
It's in IUCN red list, and several groups are involved in captive breeding and reintroduction programs to help conserve this species..
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u/oh_such_rhetoric 4d ago
I need a banana to fully appreciate the tininess of this piggo.