Chapter 10 eight pigs

The world's food ★The image of a pig Until now, the purpose of pigs is still the same as when they were first domesticated, without much change.It is a very important animal, not only has high reproductive capacity, but also has low cost of feeding.At present, the total number of pigs raised in large and small pig farms in the world has already exceeded 500 million.Some pig farms are very small, and one or two pigs can almost represent the entire property of a family. Apart from pork, no other contribution of the pig is of minor importance, even the pigskin, which makes fine leather, which is extremely unusual among domestic animals.Cows, for example, provide milk and hides in addition to beef, while goats also produce wool and milk, but unlike pigs, its secondary interests include arcane specialties such as planting, shall we say, stuffing seeds into Dirt (we may well imagine it) is said to have contributed, though limitedly, and in some small parts of southern England pigs are used to pull carts, to find truffles, and to blast field mines.

Pigs are excellent meat animals because they grow very quickly (some breeds can gain about two to two and a half pounds a day) and at the same time they grow very large, producing far more piglets per litter than Other meat animals are plentiful, at least among mammals.Furthermore, they are constantly desperate to eat and are not fussy about what they eat, from berries, fungi, young animals, chicks, carrion, worms, maggots, insects, acorns or fallen fruit from the forest floor, to garden litter, Food waste, and occasionally even humans eat it.Their zeal for food and reproduction makes them aggressive.

Oddly enough, these unique qualities have become the dominant image of the pig, forever underestimated.Previous encyclopedias have compared promiscuous people to pigs, thinking that they would rather smell feces than get close to flowers, which is really not a lovable image at all.A statue of an old German pig playing bagpipes, symbolizing lust.Gluttony was once described as an old ugly hag riding on a pig.Dante made the pigs live in a filthy pit full of leftovers in the third sector of Hell (as if going to Hell wasn't enough of a punishment. It meant that all pigs deserved to go to Hell).Clement of Alexandria (Clement of Alexandria, [Note]) once explained that the reason why Moses cast the curse on the pig was because it was related to lust and greed.In our time, the word pig has become a derogatory term for those in power, especially the police.

【Note】Alexandria is the main port and the second largest city in Egypt. It has the largest museum and library in the ancient world.Clement of Alexandria was a Christian apologist in the third century AD and one of the main representatives of the Alexandrian school of theology.He may have been born in Athens or Alexandria to pagan parents.Educated early in Athens, where he developed a love for Greek philosophy and literature; his conversion to Christianity was probably influenced by his teachers.Afterwards, he went to Alexandria as a new baptized person. It is said that most of his works came from the days in Alexandria, and four of his works are still intact.

If a pig appears in a dream, it is an ominous omen, and it is usually related to sex.For example, we have heard that an emperor once dreamed that a pig was embraced by twelve lions, which was later found to be a symbol of his erotic wife's abnormal sexual taste.In Chaucer's collection of poems "Troilus and Cresia," Troilus, the warrior of Troy, discovers that his wife has betrayed him after dreaming of a pig. In any case, as is often the case in semiotics, our impressions of pigs are both contradictory and variable.In parts of Asia and Europe, this same sensual, vulgar animal was considered divine.As the reincarnation of Vishnu, the pig is the conqueror of evil forces and has the honor of saving the earth from the suffocating depths of the sea.In ancient Scandinavian mythology, the pig is described as a thunderbolt, a luminous monster that pulls a sun chariot across the northern skyline of Scandinavia.Pigs also appear on the helmets of certain Scandinavian warriors, representing strength and perseverance.

【Note】One of the three main gods of Hinduism (the other two are Shiva and Brahma). In Roman mythology, the god of war Mars (Mars, [Note 1]) and pigs are often regarded as the same entity, and in the image on the coin, he is still wearing pigskin.When the god of war, turned to anger by jealousy, killed Adonis (Note 2), the pig also took part in the incident.Finally, when spring came again, Adonis finally won, and the symbol of the end of the matter was a slaughtered pig. 【Note 1】Mars is the god of war in Roman mythology.The early Romans identified him with Ares, the Greek god of war. 【Note 2】In Greek mythology, Adonis is the beautiful boy whom Aphrodite loves.During a hunting trip, he was killed by a wild boar instigated by Ares (Mars, the god of war in Roman mythology) who suspected him.After that, Aphrodite begged Zeus to bring Adonis back to life, and Zeus agreed to let him stay in Hades for half a year every year, and stay with Adonis for the other half.

The way Jesus treated the madman was to expel the demon controlling the patient from his body and seal the demon into the pig's body.Pigs end up being the dwelling place of demons, which is not a very good image (as a Jew, Jesus didn't have that deep affection for pigs). It is difficult to reconcile these contradictory views.In fact, pigs are sacred in some cultures, so eating pork often has some sort of ritual meaning.However, in the world of Islam (Islam) and Orthodox Judaism, the taboo against eating pork and the rejection of pigs are still as strong as ever.When the Muslim (Islamic) rebels in India were fighting fiercely against the British Empire, there were rumors that the British army would gather the corpses of Muslim soldiers who died in battle and sew them into fresh pigskins just obtained. These self-proclaimed warriors of heaven will forever be shrouded in filth, degradation and humiliation.Another false information deliberately released is that the ammunition paper seals that the army often needs to bite open during the loading process are made of lard. There is lard!Such stories are said to have influenced the outcome of wars and rebellions.

The admonition about fasting pork, originally observed only by Jews but later extended to Muslims, is said to have originated from the fear of trichinellosis.Pork was considered unclean; but in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Middle East, without a refrigerator, any meat, fish or poultry could quickly become unclean.Chicken, for example, becomes toxic after a few hours, and it stinks.The same is true of fish. In fact, pork had been a staple product of the Jordan Valley for thousands of years before the edict of Moses, and may have been a ritual sacrifice in many pagan sects.Thanks to their prolific fecundity, pigs are among humanity's greatest idols, whether they admit it publicly or not.Jews loathe food that other peoples use in various ceremonies purely because they want to avoid the idols that other peoples worship .They dislike each other and despise each other's culture.

Fasting pork may have become a part of the life of Jewish people who are committed to their unique monotheistic beliefs.After all, they were no longer pagans, and had better ideas; in order to establish a new intellectual and social order, people had to get rid of many things, and this process involved more than ritual Things, eternity are also at stake.Pigs may have just been culled without knowing their usefulness.Pigs have a long history of association with religious fanatics of other faiths, and this is at least part of the reason.If animals are used as metaphors, it may be more appropriate to describe pigs as food animals as scapegoats than other animals.

However, in Israel at the moment, pork is sold over the counter as white beef, and bacon is called zebra, out of sight of a true Orthodox Jew or Muslim.When I was in Israel, I had the experience of Israelis serving both dishes to me.While piggery is a sight that shouldn't be found in rural Israel, it's ironic that, in addition to guns and bombs, some underground smugglers and pipelines carry bacon.Seeing the pig industry as an abomination is probably one of the few things Jews and Muslims can agree on. Hunting wild boar is not just a sport.Of course, humans originally hunted pigs for their meat, but even though humans have kept pigs for a long time, they still go out and hunt the wild type; sometimes with dogs, sometimes without, Sometimes on horses, sometimes without, and mechanized vehicles equipped with communication equipment are often used.In any case, hunting wild boar was once a ritualized activity, and later evolved into a symbol of monks chasing devils.However, the pig's head on King Arthur's shield, and the pig's image on the coat of arms (although not used very often), represents power.In the late period of British rule, India had an activity of throwing javelins and killing pigs, just like massacring tigers on the back of elephants, and running horses non-stop in polo games to exhaust horses to death. It is almost an aristocratic sport.Farther afield, a more benevolent event is the pig festival held by the Gahuku︱Gama tribe in the highlands of New Guinea, and they established a common pasture for pigs so that the tribe could live without competition. In this state, put aside other problems and graze pigs together.

The behavior and image of pigs was extremely disturbing during the American Civil War.Hundreds of horrifying stories have been told of wounded soldiers left behind on the battlefield wailing in the night after that war's famously brutal onslaught.However, due to consideration of the feelings of the families of the deceased and missing persons, the painful cries of those who were bitten by pigs were rarely mentioned by both the winner and the loser, and at the same time, they were kindly forgotten by history.Equally gruesome scenes may have occurred in previous wars in Europe and Asia. Until the mid-nineteenth century, there were records of pigs being interrogated in court (sometimes dressed in human clothes and defended by court-appointed human lawyers in perhaps the strangest sleight of hand in human-animal relations), and then Was hanged.Just look at the shape of the pig's head and neck to see that it must be a nasty business, and pigs are often convicted of murder, especially of young children.Occasional cannibalism is rare among domestic animals raised by humans, but even if we don't want to overstate the frequency of such outrageous occurrences on farms and the threat they pose, they do happen.Large pigs can be dangerous, but there are still a few pig fanatics who keep smaller pigs as pets for short periods of time.Again, this is another example of humans having ambivalent emotions about one thing at the same time. ★Sequence Perhaps, as is often the case in husbandry, there was a long and important relationship between the two parties before humans attempted to raise wild boars; humans hunt wild boars in many parts of the world, so they should already know a lot about wild boars.However, the temporal overlap between pig husbandry and pig hunting, which continues to this day, is unusual for a major domestic animal.This is not a unique exception, as are wolves and reindeer, but pigs are still a rare exception.There is another side to things.Some feral domestic pigs have crossed themselves with wild boars, and they have bred wild boar species with more different variations (degrees) than true wild boars in and outside their original range. Both wild boars and domestic pigs belong to the family Suidae of the order Artiodactyla; even-toed ungulates also have hippopotamuses, camels, deer, giraffes, antelopes, cattle, sheep and goats in the same order. different family Suidae). We can almost be sure that the Porcupine family originated from Eurasia and was widely distributed in very ancient times.The famous sequence of pigs The evolution of pigs is now one of the tools used by paleontologists and physical anthropologists to date the remains of hominids in Tanzania and Ethiopia; here, pigs predated us existed before.Humans discovered their existence and soon learned to hunt them for meat, fat, and other incidental values ​​of tusks and hides. Early pigs set out from the Eurasian continent and reached Great Britain, Ireland, Sardinia, Corsica, the Philippines, Celebes in Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java on their own. , and throughout Africa, this process happened long before we came into existence, but after we were involved, we not only domesticated the pig, but brought it to North America, Central America, South America, New Guinea, other Southwest Pacific islands , as well as New Zealand and Australia.In many areas, especially on islands, pigs have established feral populations, and the number of their reproduction has caused great damage to local wild animals, and even almost completely lost the chance of survival of these wild animals. Whaling ships released pigs on certain islands, such as the Galapagos (in Ecuador) and Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands, [Note]), so that later tribesmen could hunt them The offspring of pigs have been feralized to obtain fresh pork and, at the same time, to provide some exercise to relieve the tedium of long sea voyages.However, the move is known to be destructive and has created many problems for the conservation of local wildlife.Typically, feral pigs are shot and killed to give dwindling native wildlife and habitat a chance to survive.We do not know exactly how many species of plants and animals would become extinct when animals such as pigs, rats, cats, dogs, and goats were introduced and released; lead to this result.Pigs, for example, don't have this problem where they naturally evolved, because that's where their natural enemies also evolved.However, when humans release feral domestic pigs, or wild boars for human sports, into natural habitats outside their distribution range, they are extremely destructive. 【Note】In January 1778, when British Captain James Cook passed through the Hawaiian Islands, he named the islands after his patron, the Earl of St. Wenge. There are four species in the genus Sus.Among them, the dwarf pig originated from southern Tibet; the Javan pig came from Java Island, Celebe Island, the Moluccas (In Indonesia) and the Philippines; the bearded pig can be found in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo and nearby island groups .One or more of the subspecies and variants of the European wild boar were the ancestors of the domestic pigs we now raise on farms; the domestic pigs we raise today are classified as European wild boars.Also, there is an Asian species of the Sumatran wild boar, which may have been used by the natives along with the European wild boar.Now, we only take the European wild boar as the scientific name of the modern domestic pig; we can hardly even imagine how far the hybridization has been carried out.Endemic subspecies and varieties or lines of European and Asian pigs have also been used in crossbreeding.Many of the wild types used in breeding are now extinct, so it seems impossible to trace each of the parentages included in the final hybrids. Wild boars in their natural state not only move quickly, but also frequently appear in herds showing their aggressiveness.They prefer forests with dense undergrowth, but they will also go to open grasslands not far from hiding places to forage.Throughout their range, wolves, tigers, lions, coyotes, leopards, and bears are their main predators; perhaps this is a factor in why pigs have such large litter sizes.The consumption of pigs caused by continuous hunting may also be one of the factors affecting their evolution.The pressure of the predation of natural enemies on pigs, coupled with the pressure imposed on pigs by the ancestors of early humans and later (including us), forced wild boars to remain on alert forever, and to resist tenaciously when necessary.However, pigs are still on the road to being raised. Obviously, this is something that other predators of pigs have never tried. Pigs are omnivores, which is an advantage that most pure herbivores lack.Plus, they're smart, agile, and strong.Their intelligence is not inferior to that of domestic dogs. When frightened, they will form an aggressive formation and make aggressive noises in their mouths to jointly resist foreign aggression. Pigs live in groups of ten to forty, and there have been herds of hundreds in Europe, but only in northern Europe; in eastern Poland I have seen groups of twenty-three or twenty-four Pig herds, never seen more than this number.Pigs are easily herded into chutes, stalls or traps set up in the undergrowth.Although aggressive and dangerous at close quarters, pigs are relatively easy to manage compared to other giant beasts such as aurochs and buffaloes.Because of their rapid fecundity (gestation period of only 100 to 110 days and litter sizes of up to eleven pigs), pigs are good livestock for even the most junior farmers. In addition, there is another reason to keep domesticated pigs and remove them from the wild as quickly as possible.Because pigs are so destructive to agriculture, humans kept wild boars in barns, not only to obtain an endless supply of meat, but also to protect their agricultural products.If any meat animal should be managed by humans from birth, it is pigs.As for feed efficiency, pigs convert 35 percent of the food they eat into meat and fat, while sheep are only 13 percent efficient. ★The breeding process The two questions we have to face are when and where the husbandry of pigs takes place.Presumably no so-called where and when covers many fragments of human history.The earliest domestication of pigs may have occurred in the Neolithic Age, about six to eight thousand years ago, but there are other different claims. Some discoveries in Turkey show that it should have appeared 10,000 years ago.If this is the case, then the time for humans to keep pigs can be traced back to the pre-agricultural period or a very similar period.Some researchers believe that humans' first domestic animals were pigs, not dogs, sheep, or goats. It is generally believed that humans began to settle down about 10,000 years ago after a long period of roaming, and the hunting/gathering culture ended after humans learned to cultivate grains.Maybe, things didn't quite turn out that way.In the remains of early inhabitants found in northern Turkey, there is no wheat and barley, but there are small pig teeth.At the beginning of their husbandry, pigs became smaller in size and had smaller teeth.Therefore, the reason and tool for humans to settle down may be pigs, not grains.When humans herd pigs, pigs are notoriously uncooperative, as the herd would rather stay in the same place than be driven out on the road. The story of humans raising pigs is likely to have played out in many different places, because pigs have been found in many places in Europe and Asia.The endemic subspecies are very similar to each other in many ways, and all share the same talent for easily supplying humans with large amounts of meat. In the distribution range of these wild boars, sheep, goats and dogs may have been raised and bred in many places, and the process of raising livestock seems to be unfolding in full swing.But surprisingly, Africa, where many species of wild boars have evolved, does not seem to have this kind of livestock breeding process.However, pig farming did not only occur in Europe and Asia, it also happened in the Middle East in the past, until pork became a religious issue there. Pigs will eventually be divided into categories, just as cattle are divided into meat, dairy breeds, or other breeds that are more commonly used as drafts due to their different main functions, or like goats are divided into meat, wool and milk breeds , while sheep are differentiated into different grades of wool, and breeds for meat.However, the classification of pigs is very different; no matter what type of pig it is, it is basically a meat animal, and it has been so since ancient times.The way they are raised does not reflect the way people use them, but the easiest way to raise them locally.Examples include pastured pigs, pigs raised in pens, and various indoor pigs in certain parts of Asia, most notably in China.In Asia, many of these backyard varieties have now been bred to be severely deformed and barely able to move around.It is generally believed that in China, dogs and pigs were the first two meat animals domesticated by humans, and it is more than enough to evolve various exotic strains in such a long period of time. Currently, pigs are generally categorized as bacon and lard types, however, there is apparently a third meat type; all three types simply treat pigs as food.It is a pity that in the modern agricultural and livestock industries in Europe and North America, pigs, very intelligent animals, are forced to become meat-making machines, without any welfare that a sentient animal should have.Yield means everything: Meat exchange rate [whether it is possible to increase the daily weight gain from 2.03 pounds (about 0.92 kg) to 2.7 pounds (about 1.2 kg) with the same weight and quality of feed Three kilograms)? ], and the number of offspring compared to the time and feed invested.What a cruel and excessive punishment for an animal that has long been of great significance to human beings! No other domesticated mammal is subjected to such extreme cruelty day in and day out as pigs, and such cruelty, even in most cultured human societies, is still a form of cruelty. A misused but accepted norm.Those who find Mexican rodeos, bullfights, dogfights, and cockfights horrific are indifferent to the same cruelty that most modern pig farms present.Incredibly, wild boars once chased by Neolithic hunters through the forests of Germany and Poland and ended up in well-camouflaged traps covered with fire-hardened pickets were much more feral than they are today. Better yet, a spoiled, historical, fat, ridiculously deformed pig who can barely walk.