Pig Facts 8

•  1. Pigs wallow in mud whenever they have the chance, as they don’t have sweat glands. This helps them to regulate their body temperature, keeping them cool and discouraging parasites.
• 2. Pigs are not too much different from us genetically, pig heart valves are used in humans.
• 3. ‘Hog’ was slang for an old shilling-to ‘go the whole hog’ was to spend all your money at once.
• 4. Their coats are coarse and bristly, their heads large with a long snout. They have four hoofed toes on each foot, with the two larger toes taking most of their weight.
• 5. Pigs do not need to be rounded up. A good yell will bring them running. They have a vast field of vision but are unable to look up.
• 6. Pigs are among the first animals to be domesticated about 9,000 years ago, in China. Asian farmers first brought domesticated pigs to Europe 7,500 years ago. There are approximately 840 million hogs on farms throughout the world. Boars, pigs and hogs live all over the world, except for Antarctica, northern Africa and far northern Eurasia.
• 7. They have 44 teeth and 15,000 taste buds, humans have 9,000! They can drink up to 14 gallons of water every day.
• 8. Pigs snuggle close to one another and sleep nose to nose. They dream, much as humans do. In their natural surroundings, they spend hours playing, sunbathing, and exploring.
• 9. The largest pig on record was a Poland-China hog named ‘Big Bill’, weighing 2,552 lbs. He was so large he dragged his belly on the ground. His shoulder height was 5 feet and he was 9 feet long. The smallest breed of pig is 20 pounds in maturity called the Mini Maialino.
• 10. Why are they commonly served with an apple in their mouth? Despite claims that the apple is there to keep the mouth open and let gases escape from the pig’s body as it roasts, it turns out that “it’s purely visual”.