Current Events > Canada is sending "oversized meth pigs" south across the border.

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TopGoats
02/20/23 6:49:25 PM
#1:


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/20/us-threat-canada-super-pig-boar
For decades, wild pigs have been antagonizing flora and fauna in the US: gobbling up crops, spreading disease and even killing deer, goats and elk.
Now, as fears over the potential of the pig impact in the US grow, North America is also facing a new swine-related threat, as a Canadian super pig, a giant, incredibly intelligent, highly elusive beast capable of surviving cold climates by tunneling under snow, is poised to infiltrate the north of the country.
The emergence of the so-called super pig, a result of cross-breeding domestic pigs with wild boars high on meth, only adds to the problems the US faces from the swine invasion.
Pigs are not native to the US, but have wrought havoc in recent decades: the government estimates the countrys approximately 6 million wild, or feral, pigs cause $1.5bn of damage each year.
In parts of the country, the pigs prevalence has sparked a whole hog hunting industry, where people pay thousands of dollars to mow down boar and sow with machine guns. But overall, the impact of the pigs, first introduced to the US in the 16th century, has very much been a negative, as the undiscerning swine has chomped its way across the country.
We see direct competition for our native species for food, said Michael Marlow, assistant program manager for the Department of Agricultures national feral swine damage management program.
However, pigs are also accomplished predators. Theyll opportunistically come upon a hidden animal, and the males have long tusks, so theyre very capable of running and grabbing one with their mouth.
Theyll kill young fawns, theyre known to be nest predators, so they impact turkeys and potentially quail.
The wild pigs are also responsible for a laundry list of environmental damages, ranging from eating innocent farmers crops to destroying trees and polluting water. They also pose a human health and safety risk, Marlow said.
A pig is a mixing vessel, capable of carrying viruses, such as flu, which are transmittable to humans. National Geographic reported that pigs have the potential to create a novel influenza virus, which could spread to humankind.
The first record of pigs in the continental US was in 1539, when the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto landed in Florida with an entourage which included 13 swine.
During the four-year expedition, which saw De Soto order the slaughter of thousands of Native Americans, declare himself an immortal Son of the Sun, and then die of a fever, the number of pigs grew to about 700, spread across what is now the south-eastern US.
But it is only relatively recently that the pigs have become a problem.
They lived a benign existence up until, you know, probably three or four decades ago, where we started seeing these rapid excursions in areas we hadnt seen before, Marlow said.
Primarily that was the cause of intentional releases of swine by people who wanted to develop hunting populations. They were drugged and moved around, not always legally, and dropped in areas to allow the populations to develop. And so thats where we saw this rapid increase.
The number of pigs in the US has since grown to more than 6 million, in some 34 states. The pigs weigh between 75 and 250lbs on average, but can weigh in twice as large as that, according to the USDA. At 3ft tall and 5ft long, they are a considerable foe.
Marlow said his team had managed to eradicate pigs in seven states over the past decade, but with little realistic hope of getting rid of the swine completely, there are also fears over the potential impact of pig-borne disease, particularly African swine fever.
The disease is always fatal to pigs, and in China, which is home to more than 400 million pigs half of the worlds pig population African swine fever wiped out more than 30% of the pig population in 2018 and 2019. African swine fever has presented in Europe, too, but Marlow said it has not yet been detected in the Americas.
Thats something that Ryan Brook, who leads the University of Saskatchewans Canadian wild pig research project, hopes to maintain.
In Canada, like in the US, wild pigs are a relatively recent problem. Up until 2002 there were barely any wild pigs in the country, but Brook said the population has exploded in the past eight years. The animals are now spread across 1m sq km of Canada, predominantly in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Wild pigs are easily the worst invasive large mammal on the planet, said Ryan Brook.
Theyre incredibly intelligent. Theyre highly elusive, and also when theres any pressure on them, especially if people start hunting them, they become almost completely nocturnal, and they become very elusive hiding in heavy forest cover, and they disappear into wetlands and they can be very hard to locate.
Brook and others are particularly troubled by the emergence of a super pig, created by farmers cross-breeding wild boar and domestic pigs in the 1980s. The result was a larger swine, which produced more meat, and was easier for people to shoot in Canadian hunting reserves.
These pigs escaped captivity and swiftly spread across Canada, with the super pig proving to be an incredibly proficient breeder, Brook said, while its giant size one pig has been clocked at more than 300kg (661lbs) makes it able to survive the frigid western Canada winters, where the wind chill can be -50C.
All the experts said at that time: Well, no worries. If a wild pig or a wild boar ever escaped from a farm, theres no way it would survive a western Canadian winter. It would just freeze to death.
Well, it turns out that being big is a huge advantage to surviving in the cold.
The pigs survive extreme weather by tunneling up to 2 meters under snow, Brook said, creating a snow cave.
Theyll use their razor-sharp tusks to cut down cattails [a native plant], and line the bottom of the cave with cattails as a nice warm insulating layer.
And in fact, theyre so warm inside that one of the ways we use to find these pigs is to fly first thing in the morning when its really cold, colder than -30, and you will actually see steam just pouring out the top of the snow.
Given the damage the pigs have wrought, a range of attempts have been made to get rid of them. Scientists and researchers in the US and Canada have had some success with catching whole sounders of pigs in big traps, while in the US attempts have been made sometimes unsuccessfully at poisoning wild pigs.
One method that has worked in the US, Brook said, is the use of a Judas pig. A lone pig is captured and fitted with a GPS collar, then released into the wild, where hopefully it will join a group of unsuspecting swine.
Brook said a variety of methods are required to tackle the pig problem. But the efforts are more about managing the damage caused by these non-native mammals, rather than getting rid of the pigs completely. In Canada, that chance has gone.
Probably as late as maybe 2010 to 2012, there was probably a reasonable chance of finding and removing them. But now, theyre so widespread, and so abundant, that certainly as late as 2018 or 19 I stopped saying that eradication was possible. Theyre just so established, Brook said.
Theyve definitely moved in, and theyre here to stay."

well slice me off a pound of bacon and call it a day.

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Aridi
02/20/23 6:56:05 PM
#2:


Why do you misquote and intentionally add in stupid shit about the meth?

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ToadallyAwesome
02/20/23 6:56:45 PM
#3:


From the makers of Cocaine Bear comes

SUPER PIG!

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St0rmFury
02/20/23 7:02:45 PM
#4:


ToadallyAwesome posted...
From the makers of Cocaine Bear comes

SUPER PIG!
Meth hog.

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Flauros
02/20/23 7:03:39 PM
#5:


Allow hunters to go HAM without needing tags and these Pige's would be a non issue in a week.

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https://i.imgur.com/EX6Md7k.gif https://i.imgur.com/ygAzHKB.mp4
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TopGoats
02/20/23 7:05:16 PM
#6:


Flauros posted...
Allow hunters to go HAM without needing tags and these Pige's would be a non issue in a week.

apparently they are REALLY hard to kill and very dangerous

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Chicken
02/20/23 7:05:50 PM
#7:


the new canadian bacon

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https://youtu.be/jGbI0P4hh3o
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thronedfire2
02/20/23 7:10:56 PM
#8:


But has anyone actually seen BigPig?

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Flauros
02/20/23 7:12:12 PM
#9:


TopGoats posted...
apparently they are REALLY hard to kill and very dangerous
I dont care how dank those pigs are, a 30-06 will turn their guts into mush.

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St0rmFury
02/20/23 7:14:12 PM
#10:


Flauros posted...
I dont care how dank those pigs are, a 30-06 will turn their guts into mush.
Then the meat will be spoiled.

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kirbymuncher
02/20/23 7:17:27 PM
#11:


this is why it's important to give everyone guns so they can fight back against the 30-50 feral hogs that enter their yard every day

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Flauros
02/20/23 7:17:29 PM
#12:


St0rmFury posted...
Then the meat will be spoiled.
Not all of it. You can salvage plenty after a gut shot. Ive done it before.

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TopGoats
02/20/23 8:52:51 PM
#13:


METH PIGS
from Canada

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DrizztLink
02/20/23 8:55:08 PM
#14:


Flauros posted...
I dont care how dank those pigs are, a 30-06 will turn their guts into mush.
Good luck, there are fifty of them and now they're pissed.

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Kim_Seong-a
02/20/23 8:55:13 PM
#15:


"When Canada sends their own they're not sending their best. They're sending pigs, on meth."

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Lusa Cfaad Taydr
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