Pigs in the wild

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Hoggle*&*Ludo

Hoggle*&*Ludo

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I can't imagine what they would be like in the wild, poor little things being scared of everything.

Do they look the same as the domesticated ones?

Where do they live?
 
Sure I read they were native to South America, Peru I think. Wild ones are smaller than our pet piggies and I think they are usually like brown agouti pigs. I would love to see a big herd of piggies running about in the wild, that would be an amazing sight!
 
Here is a link that might help you answer your questions:
http://www.asher.de/

The piggy on the left is the wild version of the domesticated cavy.
 
I know of three colonys in the uk living wild and thriving apparently,no i cannot tell you where and no i cannot get involved either directly or indirectly with or via the rspca.

We do get a lot of calls from people saying they have seen guineas in the wild but as they approach them the animals run,not much we can do sadly as they have usually moved on to another location by the time anyone gets there.

allan
rspca west suffolk branch
 
I would love to see a herd of them too, maybe we could write to the BBC and request an episode of 'Life' to be dedicated to the pigs! :(|)

Thanks for the link!
 
Hoggle*&*Ludo said:
I would love to see a herd of them too, maybe we could write to the BBC and request an episode of 'Life' to be dedicated to the pigs! :(|)

Thanks for the link!
Click to expand...

Oooo yeah! I've never seen anything about piggies in the wild. I think perhaps only once about piggies as pets!
 
I can't imagine it at all. Mine would be useless in the wild :))
 
There's a piggie magazine in Sweden but more than half of it is filled with stuff on shows and breeding... You're not missing anything! This forum is way better :)
 
Herr Ascher is doing his PhD on the social systems of GPs - how fascinating. What a cool subject to do; but might be a bit of a conversation killer at parties, unless he came to a party with those from TGPF............ :)p
 
The BBC programme 'Animal Park' did a programme which featured their Piggy colony once but I only caught a very tiny bit of it and haven't been able to find it since. I did go to Longleat once and saw their piggies - they all looked well enough but I couldn't imagine any of mine living 'wild'!

That picture certainly doesn't look much like our domesticated piggies does it! I live little snubby nosed pigs and the wild one is certainly more 'rat-like' in apperance.

I'd love to think that there are a couple of real wild piggy colonys somewhere in Britain :-)
 
It would be really interesting to see a programme on wild piggies in their native country (or here). Just to see how different are they to domestic ones.

Mine would be hopeless in the wild. Blossom would want her belly rubbed (yes, for some reason she loves this) and Daisy would run a mile from anything (even food!).
 
Interest about `wild piggies` have been posted since the site began. I`m not too knowlegable about this area of research but from what reading I`ve done on the subject there are no known wild guinea pigs left anywhere in South America.

There are plenty of wild `once domesticated` pigs that have escaped captivity or deliberatly let loose. Over time their colour may have reverted to looking like wild brown / grey pigs. Even so, after even a 100 or so years and thousands of generations they are certainly not in the slightest bit related to the original wild guinea pig.

Its my belief that finding a truely wild pig is like trying to find the `Ark of the Covenant`. In other words, its not out there. All wild guinea pigs are now extinct - dead and lost for ever.

With regards to the Matthuis Asher article which someone posted. I see he talks `around` the subject of wild pigs. He doesn`t mention anything about where the `so called` colonies of wild guinea pigs are in the wild. Its my belief that these types of articles of so called wild guinea pigs are a figment of romantic imagination. However, I`d like to be proved wrong.

If there are wild pigs around I`m sure Sir David Attinborough would have been there and `filmed them`.

The `Asher` single `wild guinea pig` picture is vague and looks like an old monochrome `coloured in`.

Yet once again a false trail that has lead to no-where to explain the where-abouts of wild guinea pigs.

In a way, if there are any left, its best no-one knows where they are because people will only hunt them down just like they have for the past 5oo years.
 
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