Colours of Wildlife: Pygmy Hogs
Created | Updated May 8, 2016
Pygmy Hogs
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
This time I have something very special for you! These are Pygmy Hogs, Porcula salvania. The scientific name means 'Little Pork of the Sal Forests' and is a bit inaccurate since these little swine mainly live in tall grasslands, but will venture into forests on occasion. The pygmy hog is the smallest and most endangered member of the pig family. It is the only member of the genus Porcula.
Pigs in Peril
First of all, the pygmy hog is highly unique. It is by far the smallest wild pig species in the world: it averages only 8"-12"/20cm-30cm at the shoulder, with an overall length of about 28"/70 cm. It has short legs and a rather long, barrel-like body. Its bodyweight ranges from 6.5kg-12kg/14-26 lbs. Adult pygmy hogs have dark bodies covered in dark, coarse hair, becoming longer on the head and neck. The males have short tusks that protrude from the sides of their snouts; these are not visible in the female, which you see in my illustration. Baby pygmy hogs are born pinkish with very sparse hair, developing a striped coat later on, which they finally exchange for the dark brown adult coat.
Being small, pygmy hogs are vulnerable to numerous predators, tigers most of all. Oh – that is to say most of all apart from humans. Humans do hunt these little pigs for meat on occasion, but more than that, they have seriously changed the wild environment where these piggies occur. As I've said, the natural habitat for pygmy hogs is tall, rank grass, which used to cover vast tracts of land around the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains. But today most of this has been turned to agricultural land, and in the remaining grassland, cattle are grazed – often overgrazing the land and making it unsuitable for pygmy hogs, which need tall and dense grass to hide in.
Humans also set fires, burning the grassland much more frequently than what otherwise would be the case, again changing and eroding hog habitat. Finally, the region also experiences regular floods, killing beasts of many species – and humans too. These floods to a degree are also a man-made effect: they are the result of deforestation in the Himalaya foothills, causing water to run off much faster and more devastatingly because the trees and their roots are no longer slowing the runoff down.
The end of all this is that today, this species, which originally had quite a wide range along the southern foothills of the vast Himalaya range, now occurs only in a couple of populations in the state of Assam in northern India. It is estimated that today the total population in the wild consists of a hundred and fifty or less animals!
Furthermore, while there was widespread support in India for the conservation of tigers and rhinos, to name two, there was nowhere near the needed support for improving the fate of the pygmy hog. Tigers and rhinos are supposedly more charismatic … but what is uncharismatic about these delightful little pigs? They only need better PR, that is the problem. But pig PR seems to be picking up: there are now conservation efforts for saving this species from extinction, with plentiful support among the local peoples where the hogs live. The efforts include breeding them in captivity, while also protecting wild populations, with the aim of eventually releasing captive bred pigs back into the wild.
As pigs go, pygmy hogs are not quite the most prolific breeders. They are vastly outbred and outnumbered by the plain old wild boar in India. This probably has to do with their very vulnerable size. Pygmy hogs reach adulthood at the age of one or two years, but are relatively short-lived, reaching the age of eight years on average, thus not giving them a long time to breed in. A pygmy sow gives birth to three to six pigmy piglets at a time, which she hides in a well-concealed nest in the grass, suckling them until they're able to run with her. Even into adulthood these hogs frequently retreat to these nests in the grass.
Although not breeding very prolifically, they are still not too hard to breed in captivity. Their hopes for the future now depend on the success of the breeding, habitat conservation and releasing program. The thing about conservation efforts is, that by preserving unique habitats, not just one, but many kinds of creature are being protected. And what's more, humans benefit from them also! Improvement of pig habitat in the Himalayan foothills would eventually reduce the frequency and impact of those floods that devastate man and beast indiscriminately.
