His Best Friend Was a 250-Pound Warthog. One Day, It Decided to Kill Him
texasmonthly.comMy great grandad was a pig farmer, until one day he had cut his hand or something, the pigs upon smelling blood felt like they wanted a taste of him, and he ended up climbing a tree until the neighbors found him and were able to get him out of there. After that he grew peaches, sold off all the pigs.
There is a genetic component to domestication. Wild animals cannot be “domesticated “ by raising them from birth. Base instincts take an incredibly long time to filter out by breeding.
I have mixed feelings about this. It is a wild animal that is capable of killing, while never known to be capable of total domesticated, as a dog or a cat would. Treating an animal like that as if it were your dog, or your cat, is taking a risk. Tigers or lions, warthogs or venomous snakes, it is nature.
What could've been the trigger here?
> ... that Waylon had merely decided to deliver a forceful message—“This is my pen and I’m the man around here now!”—in the only way he knew how
That was the victim's immediate reaction and it sounds right. Swine have dominance hierarchies, they compete for mates and food. Those tusks are for intra-species use too, like antlers. This was a warthog being a warthog after being mistaken for a cuddly pet.
That's the thing about wild animals, you an get along with them for sure, but unless you hand-reared them they're incredibly unpredictable. Even with hand-rearing you're taking a risk, just ask Roy Horn.
The simple fact is that a "corrective action" from a large animal can kill or maim a human, and the animal simply doesn't always have executive control over their behavior. Anyone who's dealt with a panicked horse knows that even when they don't mean to hurt you, they can reaaaaalllly hurt you. Expertise and familiarity go a long way, but the fact is that dealing with large mammals is inherently risky.
It’s like an inverted thanksgiving turkey problem
>Austin had just finished feeding Daisy, a pot-bellied pig he’s owned since she was a piglet, in an adjacent pen.
Territorial dispute? (I don't know much about warthogs)
Or smell related, either estrus cycle, or 'strange pig, attack!' reactions.
Sounds right, thanks.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Wild African animals belong in Africa, where, by the way, they evolved in an eat-or-be-eaten environment. This guy should’ve just gotten a puppy.