Swine-The Magical Animals

Wired:

Ten thousand years ago in what is now eastern Turkey, humans were settling into villages and starting to produce what humans produce best: garbage. Wild boar, omnivorous and not above scavenging, found this convenient. So the gutsiest among them stuck around the trash heaps even when people were about. Humans killed the most aggressive pigs, leaving the tamest to breed amongst themselves—and thus the domesticated pig was born.
But this would become a human-livestock relationship like no other, argues historian Mark Essig, whose book exploring humanity’s long relationship with swine, Lesser Beasts, is out today. While cows have always been out at pasture, pigs have historically lived right among people, roaming cities and earning themselves an often unpleasant reputation. They’ve become more than just a source of food: They’re a cultural force, a tool religions and cultures use to solidify their own identity—or attack their enemies.
At the very heart of it all is the fact that pigs eat poo. Good for them! Quite frankly, that’s a solid evolutionary move: They won’t find much competition for the stuff. It’s a bad idea, though, if you’re looking to make friends among humans. In the Near East, an area not exactly known for its expansive forests (the pig’s ancestors were used to roaming among trees digging up tubers and hoovering up acorns), early domesticated swine kept to the cities, eating feces and garbage and the occasional human corpse.
Interestingly, their traditional diet is probably why pigs are so damn smart: They can figure out how mirrors work and use them to search for food—oh, and they can play videogames. Being a grazer like a cow requires very little brain power, but being an omnivore requires real smarts to secure your next meal.
So, according to Essig, the pig’s bad habits led certain Near East cultures and religions, including Judaism, to brand it as a pariah. But then the Romans came along—and the Romans really, really liked pork. Essig attributes this to differences in religions and geography. “The Near Eastern religions tend to be focused on purity in a complex theological way that just wasn’t true of the Romans,” he says. “But the other bare fact is that with the Romans, the Italian peninsula is much wetter, so you have oak forests where the pigs can graze.” The Romans let pigs continue this foraging way of life in forests around their great city, then shipped them in to eat. Because pigs weren’t wallowing in the streets, the Romans didn’t brand them as unclean.

 Wait, wait, wait:

" While cows have always been out at pasture, pigs have historically lived right among people, roaming cities and earning themselves an often unpleasant reputation. They’ve become more than just a source of food: They’re a cultural force, a tool religions and cultures use to solidify their own identity—or attack their enemies. At the very heart of it all is the fact that pigs eat poo. Good for them! Quite frankly, that’s a solid evolutionary move: They won’t find much competition for the stuff. It’s a bad idea, though, if you’re looking to make friends among humans."

Seriously?  Has this writer never owned a dog?  Back in that small window of time when my dog was allowed in the house, he wanted out, and when I let him back in he waited about two minutes before barfing up a giant, fresh pile of cow manure right there on my bedroom carpet.  Cleaning up a bunch of dog puke and cow shit isn't something you want to do at 2:30 in the morning, especially when you are getting up for work at 6.  And yet, people love dogs.  Weirdly, in the West, people will eat pigs, who are smarter than dogs (and only slightly more likely than dogs to eat you if you were to be incapacitated around them), but not eat dogs.  As for the religious restrictions against pork, I subscribe to the theory that deaths from trichinosis and other diseases from undercooked pork are the genesis for Jewish and Muslim folks being banned from consuming it.  Dietary restrictions as religion.  I guess that isn't uncommon even in the modern era.  Count me as a fan of swine. I'll probably have to read this book sometime.