By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
I never thought much about pigs, except that they produce great-tasting pork. Then I was introduced to the mini-pig and was hooked. As pets, miniature pigs, marketed as “minipigs,” “micropigs,” and “teacup pigs,” are preferred.
They are easy to potty train, live for 12 to 18 years, and weigh from 13 to 15 pounds. They are very gentle creatures that love attention from people, relish sitting on your lap, and snuggling.
They sleep, if not next to you, buried under the covers nearby you. They want to be with you 24/7. They rarely make loud noises and never bark at 3:30 in the morning like dogs if they hear noises outside.
Pigs, one of the most maligned of all animals, are highly intelligent creatures that have advanced cognitive and social skills comparable to some of the smartest animal species.
They have excellent short and long-term memories. Their talents include playing simple video games, using tools, and learning to follow simple commands. Pigs also have excellent spatial memory, allowing them to navigate complex mazes and recognize individuals within a group of people.
They commonly display a wide range of emotions, including empathy, happiness, fear, and anxiety. They can learn to associate sounds with consequences, recognize their own name, and understand basic human instructions.
Pigs can even regulate their own environment, such as managing their body’s temperature and recognizing their reflection in mirrors. In contrast to the stereotype, they have a natural desire to keep their living areas clean.
They are very clean animals that enjoy a good bath. Because they do not have sweat glands to maintain their required body temperature, to prevent heat stroke, they will wallow in water, even mud, to cool off.
“Pig” is the general term for the domesticated animal, while “boar” specifically refers to an uncastrated adult male pig. “Hog” refers to a larger, older pig of either sex, often one raised for meat. In short, a hog is a large, mature pig, and a boar is a male pig.
The term “swine” is an older, more formal term derived from Old English to describe all animals in the pig family. Pigs were a major part of history in many parts of the world. They were even mentioned in the Bible. The exact count varies by translation, but “swine” appears 18 times and “pig” appears four times in the King James Version.
Like dogs, hundreds of different pig breeds exist. Only 18 extant pig species exist in the family, which includes domestic pigs. Horse and donkey matings produce a mule, which is sterile because of their mismatched chromosome numbers; a horse has 64 chromosomes, and a donkey, 62.
Their offspring inherit 63 chromosomes, which usually prevents them from creating viable sperm or egg cells during meiosis. For the same reason, a mixture of pig breeds normally does not produce fertile offspring.
DOMESTICATION OF PIGS
Modern pigs were domesticated from the Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa), with evidence for independent domestication in Asia. Domestic pigs and wild boars are the same species (or subspecies of each other).
If they produce fertile offspring, the result is widespread hybrid feral pig populations, such as those in the Americas and Australia.
Domestic pigs have also hybridized with wild boar populations, leading to the mixed genetic ancestry existing in many modern pig breeds. This is not evidence of biological evolution, but rather an example of the enormous variation created within the genetic code of the first Genesis animal kinds.
A parallel example is that all modern dogs evolved from the Genesis wolf kind, which also has an enormous ability to produce a great deal of variety.
Long before domestication, evidence suggests that pigs’ origin was in Asia and subsequently spread across Eurasia and North Africa. And “Charles Darwin suggested [that] pigs were domesticated in China” around 7,000 BC. Others estimate they were domesticated “several thousand years earlier, circa 9,000 BC. In other words, all evolutionists have are guesses about their domestication based on secular timelines.
NO EVIDENCE OF PIG EVOLUTION
The question evolutionists must ask is, “What did the Eurasian wild boar evolve from?” Evolutionists have attempted to answer this question by pointing to fossils of early pig-like mammals, such as the entelodonts, which show similarities in their omnivorous diet but also morphological differences. Entelodonts are an extinct family of large, pig-like omnivorous mammals that evolutionists postulate evolved around 37 million years ago.
Entelodonts, often referred to as “hell pigs,” are an extinct family of pig-like artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates) that inhabited the Northern Hemisphere (Asia, Europe, and North America) from the late Eocene to the early Miocene epochs.
Their large heads, low snouts, narrow gait, and proposed omnivorous diet inspire comparisons to suids (true pigs), peccaries, and historically they were considered closely related to these families purely on morphology.
Molecular (genetic) data on artiodactyls reveal that entelodonts are cetancodontamorphs, which are more closely related to hippos and cetaceans, though their resemblance is closer to Pakicetus than to basal pigs like Kubanochoerus and other ungulates.
In short, evolutionists have no evidence of pig evolution from non-pigs. An AI search concluded that “There is no evidence that modern pigs evolved from entelodonts” or any other pre-pig animal. In other words, pigs have always only been pigs.
Evidence for their by-chance evolution requires the classic “When pigs fly!” expression. According to the Bible’s account in Genesis, pigs and other land animals were brought forth on the sixth day of Creation Week, some 6,000 years ago, alongside humans. The first pig was a true pig.
Photo Courtesy of PeeWee Piglets, in Shiloh, TN 38376. They are the leading breeder of PeeWee Piglets
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Dr. Bergman is a multi-award-winning professor and author. Has 9 degrees and has taught at both the graduate and undergraduate level for over 40 years. His over 2,100 publications are in both scholarly and popular journals. Dr. Bergman’s work has been translated into 15 languages. He has spoken over 2,000 times to college, university and church groups in America, Canada, Europe, the South Sea Islands, and Africa. He lives in Montpelier and is available to present in churches and schools. Jerry can be reached at JerryBergman30@yahoo.com