When it comes to pigs, the first thing that comes to mind is always delicious and lazy, wide and fat. But a netizen once witnessed that in the back mountain of his hometown, a wild boar ate a five-step snake containing high poison alive! In just a few minutes, the pig easily sent the snake into its stomach like a spicy strip, and this scene refreshed many people's cognition.
In fact, in the folk, there has long been a saying of "pig snake", believing that pigs are the natural enemies of snakes, and in many rural areas, when marrying as a matchmaker, it is also taboo to match the people of the genus of pigs and snakes. So, is the pig snake really real? How strong is the pig's combat effectiveness?
Pigs are more powerful than you can imagine
Wild boar single-handedly? mere trifle! In April 2012, a village in Henan Province caused a "pig disaster", a wild boar emerging from the mountain forest bit people at the sight of people, and six villagers were attacked. After the wild boar arched down a village woman, it bit her thigh with its long fangs, and the villagers who came to the village only dared to watch from a distance, until the police came to hunt and kill the troublesome pig.
Hunters have "one pig, two bears, three tigers" saying, bear stunned, tiger horizontal, wild boar do not die, people encounter these three animals, the threat of pigs is the greatest, because bears and tigers find that you are not easy to provoke, but also run away, and pigs are with you do not fight you to the death.
To know how strong the fighting power of pigs is, we must start from the origin of pigs. At the end of the twentieth century, the skeleton fossils of seven camels were found in a state in the United States, and after research, it was found that these seven small camels died at the hands of ancient giant pigs.
These ancient giant pigs are the ancestors of wild boars, as can be seen from the name, ancient giant pigs are heavyweight players, with a maximum body length of up to 2 meters and a weight of more than 500 kilograms. Ancient giant pigs were athletic and muscular, and when attacking, they would use their stocky bodies to rampage and sweep their prey away like bulldozers. The most powerful thing is its sharp fangs, the bite force is stronger than the crocodile, and it can crush the bones of its prey in one bite, so the ancient giant pig is one of the most ferocious animals in ancient times.
Among the ancient giant pigs, the boss is the complete-toothed pig. The toothed pig has the strongest biting skills, the upper and lower jaws have a stronger bite force, and there are bones in the cheekbones for self-defense, just like a natural helmet.
Today's wild boar is evolved from the ancient toothed pig, after a long evolution, what does the current wild boar look like?
The wild boar we see now, smaller in size and lighter in weight, between 90-200 kg, the whole is dark brown, and there are hard needle hairs on the back, although it is not as good as the combat effectiveness of ancient giant pigs, but few animals dare to fight it hard.
The wild boar is light-headed, the front half of the body accounts for 70% of the body, the muscles of the head and neck are very developed, and even the tiger and wolf have to give up three points when they collide. The speed of wild boars is also very fast, reaching a speed of forty kilometers per hour, which is similar to the record of human 100-meter races, so animals encounter wild boars and generally cannot escape the dead hand.
The most frightening thing about the wild boar is its fangs inherited from its ancestors, and the fangs of the male wild boar are generally exposed and flipped upwards, which not only helps it dig the ground, but when it encounters an opponent, a pair of sharp fangs are like hooks, making the prey unable to move.
However, such a powerful wild boar can not escape the ultimate topic of human beings: eating. After eight thousand years of domestication, domestic pigs domesticated from wild boars have no fangs, their skin has become pink and white, and their temper is much better. Today's domestic pigs naturally do not have the destructive power of wild boars, and the incidents of pigs eating snakes that are heard today also refer to wild boars.
Not only are we curious, is it really as easy as eating spicy strips when wild boar, once the king of the forest, meets a snake?
Snake pig battle who will win
Wild boars were once the kings of the forest, and snakes are not easy to mess with in the forest, snakes have a high degree of flexibility and the most lethal weapon: venom. When the snake preys, it will quickly wrap around the opponent with its slender body, slowly contracting until the opponent suffocates to death, and the poisonous snake will release venom to paralyze the opponent's nerves, which makes it easy to deal with enemies that are much larger than itself.
In 2021, a nearly 4.5-meter-long python in Thailand completely poisoned a cow after being twisted and strangled, and then swallowed it directly, and finally its belly was burst. In the village of Mpusha in South Africa, there was an incident in which 60 villagers were poisoned en masse because they had all eaten cattle that had been poisoned by cobras. The venom of the poisonous snake is not a joke, the venom of the highly venomous cobra is enough to poison an adult cow at one time, you know, the size of the cow can be much larger than the wild boar, it is reasonable to say that the venom of the cobra is enough to kill a wild boar, but why can't you take the wild boar?
In fact, this is related to the mechanism by which venom works. For venom to work, it must first bite through the skin of its opponents and let the toxin spread through the bloodstream, which is the signature weapon of the poisonous snake, but when the poisonous snake encounters the wild boar, it is difficult.
We often say that pigs have "thick skin", especially wild boars, which have a thick layer of mane on the surface of the skin, which can reach 3-10 cm. The wild boar also likes to rub around, and under the friction of stones and trees, its mane becomes sharper, like a copper wall. After rolling in the mud pond, the muddy water meets the mane, and the mixture is harder than concrete. Therefore, although the snake's teeth are sharp, it is difficult to bite through this layer of barrier, and the venom naturally cannot play a role.
In 2016, a farmer was attacked by a wild boar when he entered the village to herd sheep, and his chest and abdomen were picked apart by fangs. The fangs of the wild boar are its main weapon in battle, 5-7 centimeters long, and when the wild boar is attacked, the muscular body will desperately rush and shake its head. No matter how flexible the snake's evasion is, it cannot resist the sharp fangs of the wild boar, and as long as it is stabbed, it will undoubtedly die.
We all use "dog nose" to describe the sense of smell sensitivity, but the nose of a wild boar can be more powerful than a dog, the sensitivity is more than two thousand times that of humans, even the food buried two meters deep underground it can smell, it only needs to smell, it can know where the snake is hiding, and even guess what they are doing. Therefore, even if the snake hides, it will be exposed under the nose of the wild boar.
Wild boars are omnivorous animals, for plants, vegetables are not rejected, insects and small birds and beasts in the animals can only plug their teeth for them, these foods make the pig trained a steel stomach, even the centipede in the five poisons dare to mouth. Therefore, although there are toxins in the snake's body, but digesting these is not worth mentioning for the stomach of the wild boar, and after eating the poisonous snake, it is like eating spicy strips, which can only be "spicy mouth".
The man-pig war does not stop
Wild boar species are abundant, strong viability, strong reproductive ability, in parts of the mainland, wild boar has a tendency to flood, in 2007, the mainland has 16 provinces were infested by wild boar.
Wild boars trampled on a large number of fields, and frequently injured people, and "human-pig wars" occurred with people, which made people cry bitterly. In order to deal with wild boars, some villages have also set up "wild boar teams", tied barbed wire, scarecrows, and even sent special personnel to guard.
Wild boars are listed as protected animals and cannot be killed at will, but in the face of a situation that is becoming increasingly uncontrollable, since 2006, the mainland has slightly relaxed the restrictions on the killing of wild boars, and in some areas where wild boars are seriously harmful, the Forestry Department can apply for organized and planned hunting.
The balance of human and animal survival is still obstructed and long, and how to coexist peacefully with these former forest kings is still a topic worth exploring.