PIGS GONE WILD

摘要

You only have to look at a sow's underbelly to fully comprehend how serious the feral pig problem is. An average female pig has 12 teats; some have 18, more than any other mammal. Rats have 12, and primates (except for a few monkey species) are at the low end of the scale with two. After a gestation period of only four months, a sow gives birth to five to 10 piglets. She can do this twice a year, and those baby pigs are off the teat, up and foraging, within a few days of — their birth. They'll be sexually mature themselves in iust six months. This highly efficient repro-duction matters because fe-ral pigs will eat almost any-thing they can find on the forest floor, in swamps, or in farmers' fields. They at-tack an area in a group and with a manner of eating-rooting with stiff snouts-that leaves a field looking as though a crowd of people with a deranged enthusiasm for rototill-ing has been at work.