(playful music)
When you think of pigs,
do you picture mud wallows and pink curly tails?
Lucky symbols and money banks?
Or just bacon sandwiches?
Whatever you think you are probably underestimating
the world's amazing pigs.
To find out how they became our favorite farm animals
we need to visit their cousins in the wild.
Popular culture is full of pig related sayings,
but they are almost all wrong.
(serene music)
A year with wild boars and their relatives
reveals a tender and dedicated matriarchal society.
Playful youngsters, speedy escape artists,
and powerful warriors.
(pigs grunting)
Not telling any porkies.
It's time to meet the pigs.
Pig, swine, hawker.
Hog, piggy.
There's no child on earth that doesn't know
that the pig it goes oink.
Pigs are one of the most recognizable
and iconic of all animals.
And it's hardly surprising.
There are one billion of them on Earth,
and as much as they are loved,
pigs, get a pretty raw deal.
To most they're walking ham, pork, and bacon.
Vital and tasty protein to people around the world.
(lighthearted music) (pig grunting)
But there is more to pigs than meets the eye.
And to reveal their many remarkable properties,
we need to look to their ancestors in the wild.
(serene music)
These huge intimidating animals were legendary
for their ferocity and strength.
They adorned the crest of the most powerful families,
a symbol of fertility, a transport to the gods,
and an icon of war.
Allegedly Alexander the Great sent pigs into battle
to scare off the enemy's elephants
with their shrill squeals.
It may not be true, but the vocal powers of pigs are.
They have higher decibel than a jet.
Just one of the amazing traits
they inherited from their ancestors.
(serene music)
Autumn is the time of the rut for wild boars.
Boar society is actually matriarchal.
The group, known as a sounder, is led by a few females,
the sows and they're young.
The males are solitary for most of the year,
but now as the days shorten and temperatures drop
they seek out the sounders.
They are giants known as boars.
(pig squealing)
The males can top the scales at 200 kilos,
more than twice the weight of the females,
To pass on his genes this prime boar
must line himself up a date.
(upbeat jazz music)
He wallows, churning his personal cologne into the mud,
and using the sticky face pack to fix it to his body.
He has another piggy aftershave in his toolkit
that the females find hard to resist.
He chomps his jaws,
a common communication strategy for all pigs,
but he's doing it to make himself dribble
and to whip the saliva into a sticky foam.
His drool contains a pheromone,
a chemical message telling the females
he's looking for action.
At first they don't seem too impressed.
(pig grunting)
(playful music)
He goes for a bit of nuzzling,
not only improving this one's mood
but sneakily also coating her with this smelly saliva.
He's literally drooling over her.
(playful music)
(pig grunting)
And gradually she seems to be coming round to the idea,
but even though his goal is in sight,
his conquest is far from over.
Another huge boar,
intent on challenging for the title.
He pees and rubs his face on the bushes.
It's like graffitiing over another gang signature marks
with his own, laying claim to the patch.
This is a declaration of war.
(dramatic music) (pigs grunting)
And wild boars are always armed and ready for battle.
They have two sets of tusks.
The smaller, lower tusks are the ones to watch,
sticking out like daggers from the sides of their snout.
These blades are self-sharpening
by rubbing against the bigger, showier upper tusks.
(pigs grunting) (dramatic music)
The rivals aim for the less protected belly and rump.
And it's not long before both are bloodied.
(pigs grunting)
One blow strikes home,
and the injured party limps off,
admitting defeat before things get worse.
The tough victor seems to brush off his wounds
like nothing ever happened and makes his move.
(serene music)
His heroics in battle seem to have impressed.
And this time she allows the mating to go ahead.
It's a strenuous and stressful time for the wild pigs,
but it doesn't last long.
(gentle music)
Soon winter creeps in across the forest.
Wild boar are one of the planet's most widespread
and abundant animals.
Living all across Europe, Northern Africa and Asia,
their thick, double-layer coats help them
to withstand the cold.
(playful music) (pig grunting)
The bristly hairs have long been used by people,
most notably on paint brushes.
Their compact bodies are perfectly condensed
to plow through undergrowth.
But their short legs make deep snow a challenge.
It limits their northern range.
But pigs and their relatives are pretty adaptable
and can thrive almost anywhere.
18 kinds of true wild pigs, like the boars,
and their African cousins warthogs,
have colonized most landmasses and islands of Africa,
Europe and Asia.
But not the Americas.
(twangy music)
Here they have a look alike, a distant relative.
Though not as close as looks might suggest.
Smaller and much lighter than boars,
they have another distinctive feature.
Boars tusks grow out and curve up.
Peccary's are shorter and straighter, pointing down.
They chomp their teeth together to communicate.
Confusingly, peccaries evolved in Europe
and spread across the world.
Perhaps out competed by the true pigs,
they only remained in the Americas.
There are three kinds that have adapted
to make a home in anything from desert to jungle.
(suspenseful music)
These white-lipped peccaries live in groups
known as squadrons,
which contain tens, sometimes hundreds of individuals.
Unlike boars, males and females of all ages live together.
Their sizable squadrons are a defense
against the many large predators that enjoy eating them.
In particular, the jaguar.
(suspenseful music)
Distracted by the muddy soup of tasty roots
and fallen fruits, they don't notice its approach.
But with so many sets of ears, eyes, and sensitive noses,
it's not long before the herd senses
that they are not alone.
One squeal and they're off.
(suspenseful music)
(pig squealing)
While groups can be advantageous,
things are changing for the European wild boars.
While the forest is enjoying the first signs of spring,
a sow has broken away from the protection of her sounder
and builds herself a nest in the undergrowth.
The large noisy group can attract
unwanted attention from predators.
But tucked away she can secretly deliver her young.
(serene music)
For the first week or two they won't leave the nest.
But then, cautiously at first,
a collection of tiny humbug-striped piglets,
or squeakers, emerge.
(inquisitive music)
The adorable go-faster stripes,
the rump suits of baby boars,
help them to camouflage on the forest floor.
That's if they sit still.
(playful music)
As if turbocharged, they seem to adapt effortlessly
to their new surroundings.
It's a cold arrival.
There are still patches of snow.
But thanks to their mother's milk,
which is dished up throughout the day,
they will quickly bulk up.
(pigs grunting)
There's a healthy half dozen youngsters.
And this was one of the features that made pigs attractive
as farm animals.
Encouraged through eons of selective breeding,
domestic pigs can churn out huge litters.
The biggest recorded was a whopping 37 piglets.
And they can have babies twice a year.
Pigs have always been a reliable way
for farmers to keep their larders full.
(inquisitive music)
The little piglets follow their mother everywhere,
copying what she does.
And in this way learning where to sniff out
and identify food.
They start nibbling at solids almost straight away,
even though they'll have milk on tap
for two or three months.
It's not always easy to focus on the lessons.
(playful music)
Life is one endless game of chase,
and that's just as well.
Boars are tough prey,
but the little ones can be picked off
by wildcats, lynx, or foxes.
(dramatic music)
Being competitive runners might someday help them
race for life.
(suspenseful music)
Fortunately for most boars, the mother is diligent
and won't hesitate to chase off any threat.
(gentle music)
Life is tough for pigs.
They are good at defending themselves,
but they have some formidable enemies.
Not just wild cats and foxes, but lynx, wolves, even tigers.
It's perhaps hardest for the brave pigs
who have ventured out onto the open African plains.
The greatest assemblage of predators shares this habitat.
Servals, hunting dogs,
hyenas, leopards,
cheetahs, and lions.
Warthogs are the only pigs adapted entirely
to the grass plains.
Though their necks are so short
that they often have to kneel to graze close to the ground.
Like the boars, these wild pigs have matriarchal sounders.
They have their young in underground burrows,
but sooner or later, the little ones must venture out.
Though their litters are quite small,
there are enough piglets for everyone
to find a sparring partner.
And the piggy zest for life is as strong as ever.
(suspenseful music)
But fun and games are risky where there is nowhere to hide.
Warthog piglets are fast.
In fact, these African athletes
top nearly 50 kilometers an hour.
But still an easy meal for the fastest animal on land.
(suspenseful music)
Unless the family has anything to do with it.
Hog heroics.
(dramatic music)
Her rescue efforts are paying off,
but the cheetah gang, or coalition,
combine their efforts.
By baiting the mother, one cheetah draws her away.
(dramatic music)
(pig squeals)
She did her best, but outnumbered, it wasn't enough.
Pig families can have a hard start in life.
(playful music)
But after a few weeks,
the mother wild boar is ready to introduce her family
to the rest of the gang.
It's excitement all around.
Several of the sows have litters.
So suddenly the humbugs have even more playmates.
As they grow the games get rougher.
(pigs grunting)
Pigs have strict hierarchies.
And even at this tender age
they are starting to establish their rank.
Squabbling is a life skill, and this is boot camp.
Joining the litters together means
there are more powerful mothers to defend their little ones,
but it also means there are babysitters.
The sows can drop off their kids with the sitter
and have a well-earned break.
(pigs grunting)
Coming back in time for tea.
The high energy piggies are hard work,
and mums can get a bit fed up and heavy handed.
(pig squealing)
But the youngsters have to learn.
They need to master etiquette
so they can stand their ground,
learn to stay safe, and figure out what to eat.
Which in the case of pigs, it's just about anything.
Collared peccaries, or javalinas,
in Arizona watch their step.
(playful music)
Their food has bite.
These desert hog-a-likes specialize in eating cactus.
But it's an acquired skill.
When cholla cactus want to make baby cactuses
they produce little detachable burrs
that seek piggybacks on the peccaries.
The adults know to be careful,
but naive youngsters fall foul.
It won't take them long to get the point.
In a way, the piglets are doing the cactus a favor
and distributing its offspring,
which also serves to propagate future crops for themselves.
Some even say the peccaries are farmers,
claiming they deliberately spit out a few seeds
when they are feeding to plant future crops
and carry other seeds further in their droppings,
helping the plant spread.
The way they feed ensures there will be plenty
more food in the future.
Peccary's stomachs are a little more complex
than other pigs.
More like other hoofed animals.
But pigs have a simple stomach, not unlike humans,
and like us can eat just about anything.
(bright music)
As summer progresses, the diet of the young wild boars
gets more and more varied with the changing seasons.
Flowers.
Fruit.
Snails.
Anything their sensitive snouts can sniff out.
All can make a good meal.
Pigs have some unique tools to help them find food.
Something the piglets are learning to master.
(pig sniffing)
Their snouts are long and strong
to plow furrows in the leaf litter
and to dig out treats.
And they are tipped with a unique discs.
Only pigs and peccaries have these.
(pig squealing)
It's sensitive and mobile, and yet incredibly tough.
The long nose is packed with sensors,
giving them a formidable food locating sense of smell.
Some 2,000 times more sensitive than ours.
(pig grunting)
It's this skill that has led to pigs
being used to sniff out valuable truffles.
(pig grunting)
Boars are incredibly strong.
Just a flick of their head can shift a log,
or another boar, to get it food underneath.
By log tossing they can locate insect grubs
that were borrowing in the rotten wood.
And after a feast the youngsters have another lesson.
Time for the beauty regime.
It's no coincidence we have the phrase
as happy as a pig in mud.
The whole clan loves nothing better than a good wallow.
But it's not because they're dirty animals.
Quite the contrary.
How many mums yell to their kids
your room looks like a pig sty.
It's ironic, because pigs are fastidiously clean.
They establish latrines, community toilets,
so they never have dirt by their food or sleeping quarters.
They have even been known to wash their food.
(water sloshing) (pigs grunting)
Pigs can't sweat or pant as a dog would,
to regulate their temperature.
But as the mud dries the evaporating air
helps to cool them down.
And the generous mud pack smothers ticks
and prevents biting insects from reaching their skin.
And what could be better to finish off the treatment
than a good rubdown and scratch?
The piglets are growing fast.
Their stripes are starting to fade
as they molt into their adult colors.
Their squabbles are a bit rougher now,
with social boundaries being enforced.
(pig squealing)
Especially among males, practicing the moves they'll need
to impress the girls in the future.
Young pigs learn through trial and error.
Curiosity drives their exploration.
For this young warthog
it leads to an extraordinary discovery.
(playful music)
What is this? A moving rock?
A giant mobile pine cone?
The pangolin, one of the shyest, sweetest animals,
is a totally harmless anteater.
Its fur has evolved into a series of fingernail-like scales
that help protect it from predators.
The hogs aren't sure what to make of it.
But it's important to figure out
who is friend and who is foe.
And to avoid wandering too far from home.
This sounder is in trouble.
Though often viewed as lowly scavengers,
hyenas are actually the most efficient
big predators on the plains,
using combined forces to separate and overpower prey.
Once again, mum's not going down without a fight.
(dramatic music)
The pigs are not only fast,
but can turn on a dime to dodge the attackers.
But they're outnumbered.
Once those bone crushing jaws have latched on
it's already too late.
(pigs squealing)
(suspenseful music)
For all piggy families, the months are rolling past.
The seasons bring changes
that the youngsters must learn to exploit.
In the baking heat of the Arizona desert,
the prickly neighbors that have been making life tough
for the residents are about to pay out.
The cacti produce sweet treats.
They're gift packages for the wildlife,
a fee for distributing their seeds.
They're not easy for little trotters to get to,
but fortunately the birds and the squirrels
that can reach them can be a little clumsy.
A calorie rich and thirst quenching snack.
(gentle music)
Just what the peccaries needed.
The forests of Europe are even more generous
as autumn colors are rolled out across the landscape.
The trees send out their seeds as acorns and nuts.
(gentle music)
A feast for the sensitive noses
of the wild boar to root out.
There's fierce competition for the best morsels.
(playful music)
The youngsters were weaned at three months old
and join in the feast, tearing around and scrapping.
Their go-faster stripes have all but vanished now,
replaced by a denser coat for the colder months ahead.
They're behaving ever more like adults,
even trying to mount other members of the sounder.
They are less than a year from sexual maturity,
but for now are mostly going through the motions.
(pigs grunting)
With the arrival of shorter days and colder temperatures
comes the appearance of the big male boars again.
Having the big boars hanging around
and strutting their stuff seems to cause great excitement
for the little ones.
But the seasons have other meanings
the young boars need to learn.
(gunshot pops) (pig squealing)
It's the start of the hunting season.
As much loved as farmed pork and bacon are,
there still a drive for wild game.
And the animals are shot as pests
to reduce their impact on managed habitats and farmland.
And especially the misgrowing fears over the transfer
of diseases like swine fever from the wild animals
to their domestic cousins.
(serene music)
This youngster was shot as part of a cull.
His body is left to rot,
but it wouldn't go to waste.
It's a meat mountain for the hungry.
Welcome food for scavengers like crows
and even eagles, preparing them for the winter months ahead.
(pig grunting)
For survivors who learned to lie low
and watch out for humans, the breeding season can commence.
(pigs grunting)
It takes about four years for these impressive hogs
to have the muscle to fight for mating rights.
But they are so preoccupied with each other
that they don't notice a youngster sneak in.
He's only one of last year's piglets,
but a bit of brainpower and stealth
and he's jumped the queue.
Pigs are smart.
Perhaps as intelligent as a three-year-old child.
In terms of learning tricks and routines,
pigs are kings among animals,
beaten only by apes and dolphins.
Sneaky stealth has got this one an early chance to breed.
And that is one of the traits
people found attractive about wild pigs.
They mature quickly.
And so if you keep a few
you don't have to wait long for your assets to grow.
Around 10,000 years ago, people were making a transition
from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers.
Around the same time, perhaps 9,000 years ago,
wild pigs were kept and bred into domestic forms
in both the Middle East and China,
and brought it to Europe several thousand years ago,
where their genes were topped up
with the hardy European wild boars.
With a few thousand years of selective breeding
they have become bigger and even faster breeding
than their wild cousins.
(pigs grunting)
Young domestic pigs reach puberty around five months
and female pigs can come into season throughout the year.
For wild ancestors, the window for reproductive success
is much more limited.
The last thing they need are any interruptions.
But pigs are tasty, not just to humans,
but to all big predators.
(suspenseful music)
On the African plains it's lions who are enemy number one.
(dramatic music)
The lean tasty meat of the powerful porkers
is worth fighting for.
And it's not always the lion that brings home the bacon
that gets to enjoy it.
(lion roaring)
High reward for meat-eaters,
but a heavy burden for the planet's pigs.
But as vegetarians, pigs are far from squeaky clean.
(serene music)
On a European meadow, a horse has died of natural causes.
Ravens and foxes are quickly on the scene.
But there's a bigger scavenger wanting to get in on the act.
Boars and their domestic cousins will readily scavenge,
even kill small prey, to top up on calories,
much to the raven's disgust.
The pig's broad diet was another draw for farming humans.
Any plant or animal waste from the farm could be recycled,
converted to protein by a pig.
Their adaptability meant pigs
could be farmed pretty much anywhere
and traveled with people as they colonize the globe.
But the piggy power to adapt
was an environmental disaster.
Areas with native pigs have evolved with them
over millions of years
and can cope or even benefit from their presence.
But people shipped their pigs to parts of the world
where they didn't belong.
For island hopping sailors,
pigs were the perfect living lunchboxes.
Ships could turf out the pigs
and wherever they were in the world
the pigs would set forth
and feed themselves on the local plants and animals.
And they would breed, providing sailors and settlers
with plenty of food.
But they'd also run amuck.
And in places without large predators
there was nothing to limit their populations.
These pigs on the run would eat anything in their path,
which was particularly devastating on islands.
Like Galapagos, where they feasted on the eggs
and young of giant tortoises.
Or islands with ground nesting birds,
like the penguins of South Georgia.
Here pigs were introduced to provide food
for remote whaling stations.
It took a heavy toll on wildlife,
a pattern repeated around the globe.
Flightless and ground nesting birds
had no knowledge or fear of the porcine invasion
and were sitting ducks.
Hundreds of species were wiped out.
(pig grunting)
In Australia, pigs not only munched
the unique native wildlife,
but also trampled and uprooted
the fragile plant ecosystems too.
Their desire for water and muddy wallows
can destroy whole wetland ecologies.
On the Australian continent alone,
there are 24 million wild pigs.
There are now feral pigs all over the world.
They are considered one of the most damaging
invasive species on the planet.
There are many eradication programs,
but as we've seen pigs are intelligent, cunning,
fast, and fast to breed.
So even heavy hunting rarely manages to wipe them out.
Interestingly, it only takes a few generations
of breeding in the wild for feral pigs
to start to resemble the thick-shouldered,
hairy-bodied forms or their wild boar ancestors.
It shows just how strong and successful
the genes of wild pigs really are.
And where they do belong,
like in the ancient forests of Europe,
boars play a vital role in keeping the environment healthy.
Being prey to some species
and predators to others.
(serene music)
Through their foraging they disperse seeds
and weed out abundant plants,
increasing species diversity of everything
from flowers to butterflies.
They churn, aerate, and enrich the soil,
in turn increasing tree growth.
(pig squealing)
Pigs are amazing.
They enrich their own environments
and have shaped human history.
They show us we are not alone as intelligent beings.
And they've become cultural icons and much loved friends.
There's undoubtedly a magical power to pigs.
(gentle music) (piglets squealing)