Facts you didn't know about pigs before

• Humans farm pigs for meat such as pork, bacon and ham.
• Some people like to keep pigs as pets.
• Wild pigs (boar) are often hunted in the wild.
• In some areas of the world, wild boars are the main source of food for tigers.
• Feral pigs that have been introduced into new areas can be a threat to the local ecosystem.
• Pigs can pass on a variety of diseases to humans.
• If you’ve ever suggested that someone was ‘sweating like a pig’, then you’d be wrong. Pigs have hardly any sweat glands, and one of the best ways for them to cool down is to wallow in all of that glorious mud.

• Pigs do not “eat like pigs” or “pig out.” They prefer to eat slowly and savor their food.
• Suzanne Held, who studies the cognitive abilities of farmed animals at the University of Bristol’s Centre of Behavioural Biology, says that pigs are “really good at remembering where food is located, because in their natural environment food is patchily distributed and it pays to revisit profitable food patches.”
• Pigs are clean animals. If given sufficient space, they will be careful not to soil the area where they sleep or eat. Pigs don’t “sweat like pigs”; they are actually unable to sweat. They like to bathe in water or mud to keep cool, and they actually prefer water to mud. One woman developed a shower for her pigs, and they learned to turn it on and off by themselves.

• In his book The Whole Hog, biologist and Johannesburg Zoo director Lyall Watson writes, “I know of no other animals [who] are more consistently curious, more willing to explore new experiences, more ready to meet the world with open mouthed enthusiasm. Pigs, I have discovered, are incurable optimists and get a big kick out of just being.”

For more detail tiger information for kids