Spotted wild boars (1 Viewer)

[locustella]

Spotted wild boars and piglets near Warsaw border, March 26th 2025:

There are a lot of photos and videos of such wild boars in Poland on the internet. According to one hunter they were rare in the past. (??)
Do they have EP allele of the melanocortin 1 (MC1R) gene introgressed from the domestic pig like in the literature available on the internet I have found in recent days or are they spontaneous natural mutants, carrying for example a natural EP allele ? And are they homozygotes EPEP or heterozygotes E+EP ?
Does anyone know ?

 

[Farnboro John]

I'd hazard a guess they would make good bacon, which would be one way of solving the matter.

John

 

[locustella]

I would not eat any wild animal, not only because of ethical issues, but also because they can carry strange diseases and parasites. Do you want to have something awful developing in your brain or eye ? Wild boars particularly can have Trichinella spiralis or even for example Spirometra.

 

[Farnboro John]

I would not eat any wild animal, not only because of ethical issues, but also because they can carry strange diseases and parasites. Do you want to have something awful developing in your brain or eye ? Wild boars particularly can have Trichinella spiralis or even for example Spirometra.

A quick Google suggests trichinella is easily defeated by proper cooking and/or freezing and since these obvious domestic hybrids need killing, waste is abhorrent and there are insufficient predators to get the job done, wild boar bacon and sausages are the logical answer. If you don't want them pass the plate.

John

 

[locustella]

A quick Google suggests trichinella is easily defeated by proper cooking

John

So you like cooked worms. Bon appétit !
I think that those boars could be homozygotes EPEP.
In Europe this allele (EP) could be introgressed even tens of years or centuries ago, when pigs were grazed under the forests or inside them and could meet wild boars (see The Swineherd). But one hunter wrote in such forum, that spotted boars were rare in the past, what is a little disturbing.

 

[Farnboro John]

So you like cooked worms. Bon appétit !
I think that those boars could be homozygotes EPEP.
In Europe this allele (EP) could be introgressed even tens of years or centuries ago, when pigs were grazed under the forests or inside them and could meet wild boars (see The Swineherd). But one hunter wrote in such forum, that spotted boars were rare in the past, what is a little disturbing.

Yep. And while I'm concerned that an ancient allele might not be ecologically significant, it's clearly not normal phenotype: so it probably won't be differentially removed by predators and should be selectively culled by humans - and then eaten by means that remove disease. Highest standards are applied to human food chain so that the ideal.

BTW wild food I eat includes deer venison, pigeon, trout, occasionally salmon, pelagic fish, crustacea and molluscs. There's nothing unsound about sustainable cropping of wild food.

John

 

[Steve Babbs]

Worms are found in domestic pork too; that's why it's so important to cook it properly.

On the wild animal front, I'm rather keen on kudu and wild venison is about the most ecologically sound meat you can eat.

 

[Julian Perry]

So you like cooked worms. Bon appétit !
I think that those boars could be homozygotes EPEP.
In Europe this allele (EP) could be introgressed even tens of years or centuries ago, when pigs were grazed under the forests or inside them and could meet wild boars (see The Swineherd). But one hunter wrote in such forum, that spotted boars were rare in the past, what is a little disturbing.

Very interested to come across your post and hypotheses. Last year for the first time I started to capture "spotted wild boar" on camera traps I have set up in the mountains around my village in Bulgaria. I have many years of camera trap footage, but its only last year that any "spotted wild boar" have been recorded. This also got me started on questioning their origin. What is particularly interesting is that this region is predominantly Muslim and I have no knowledge of local people breeding domestic pigs here. However, wild boar hunting is very popular in the region, and I started to wonder if local people may have supplemented the local wild boar population by purchasing young 'wild boar' (of dubious purity) and then released these into the wild.