Super Pigs Will Eat Your Pet

Wild pigs are spreading from the prairies in central Alberta and heading toward the provincial capital.

“They tear up the forest floor, native grasslands get destroyed, wetlands, water systems,” Ryan Brook told the Edmonton Journal. “Wild pigs are the worst invasive wild mammal on the planet — I don’t think there’s any debate about that.” The University of Saskatchewan professor worries they could become permanent residents in Edmonton if the city doesn’t prepare.

The big furry creatures, believed to be escapees from local farms in the 1990s, are hybrids of the domestic variety and Eurasian wild boars. They weigh up to 220 pounds and are truly omnivorous: they chow down on roots, insects, squirrels, birds, deer – anything, really, including pets.
Besides eating, they like to mate. Females, from the time they are 16 months old, whelp two litters of six piglets a year on average.
Alberta put a $50 bounty on the “super pig,” but hunting them individually was counterproductive. The pigs live in large groups known as “sounders,” which quickly adapt and change habits when an individual animal is taken by a hunter.

To counter the porcine masterminds, the Alberta Invasive Species Council instructed citizens to simply “squeal on pigs” when they see them in the wild (which is the most Canadian thing ever) so that officials can move in to eliminate entire sounders at once (which sounds terrible).

Professor Brook frets that Edmonton has no plan. “You cannot dabble in wild pig eradication. You either go in full hog and go hard and remove them, but you need a strategy.” So far the city is letting the provincial government handle it.

There are an estimated 56,000 super pigs in Canada, about half of them in Saskatchewan. Good luck.

Photo credit: Natural Resources and Forestry