Domestic pig

Where does the domestic pig live?

Home: on farms, pastures and in village yards.

In the wild it lives in these countries: China, the United States, Brazil, Germany, Spain, Vietnam, Denmark, the Netherlands.

The short profile

Fully grown: 90–180 cm long. It weighs about 150 kilograms. On the menu: both plants and meat.

The story behind it

Pigs were tamed from wild boars around 8000 years ago, in the Near East and in China. A pig's snout is its main tool: it carries its own little bone at the tip, so the animal can lever its way through hard ground. Pigs have very few sweat glands, which is why they lie down in mud, because the wet layer cools them and keeps flies and sunburn away. A mother pig builds a nest of straw before her twelve or so piglets are born, and afterwards she calls them with soft grunts. Researchers in England trained young pigs with mirrors and reported that the animals then used a mirror to find a bowl of food hidden behind a wall. A later study with a similar test found no such behaviour, so scientists are still arguing about how much a pig understands of a reflection. What almost everyone agrees on is that pigs learn fast, remember places and enjoy solving small puzzles for a snack.

Find it on the globe

Domestic pig is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.