Pygmy Hog
(Porcula salvania)
I’ve always loved the pig family. The first animal I “habituated” was a saddleback named (by me) Grunter. He was in a field with about ten others. I took him my apple core after lunch every day during a summer holiday and eventually he let me scratch his back. What a triumph!
One of my treasured memories from my years in Gombe was the time when a sounder of bushpigs came upon me as I sat very still in the forest. They could not make me out, stared and sniffed the air, came closer—until I was surrounded. One gave a snorting alarm call and they ran off a few yards, but returned to stare in silence. Finally they moved on, rustling through the leaves eating fallen mbula fruits. I’ve spent time, also, watching another member of the porcine family: warthogs on the Serengeti plains, grazing on their bent knees, running with tails straight up, competing with each other for the best dens in which to sleep for the night. And I’ve glimpsed wild boar while driving at night in Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
When I first saw pygmy hogs—a pair in Zoo Zürich—I could scarcely believe my eyes. A pig, measuring at the most one foot in height, and weighing a maximum of twenty pounds! I was sure I was looking at two juveniles—yet they were perfect little adults, dark brown with coarse hair, short stubby legs, and a minute tail. There was a slight crest on the forehead and nape of neck, and a tapering snout. I could just see the canines peeking from the mouth of the male.
The man who first described these diminutive beings in 1847, B. H. (Brian Houghton) Hodgson, must have been very amazed. He reckoned they were a different species, and although other scientists later declared the pygmy hog to be a relative of the wild boar, Hodgson was eventually proved right. Recent genetic investigations indicate that pygmy hogs belong to a unique genus, with no close relatives.
They live in tall dense grassland where they eat an omnivorous diet of roots, tubers, various invertebrates, eggs, and so on, feeding during the day unless it is very hot. They make quite elaborate nests, often digging a trough with snout and hooves, piling up soil around the edges, lining it with grass they bend down on each side, and bringing more in their mouths to make a roof. A couple of females and their young may share one nest, while the adult males, who are usually solitary, make their own. Their main predators are the python and dhole (also known as the Asiatic wild dog). And, of course, humans. (For those who like trivia, let me reveal that the pygmy hog is sole host to the pygmy hog sucking louse [Haematopinus oliveri], a louse that is classified as critically endangered and named after William Oliver, the chairperson of the IUCN Pigs, Peccaries and Hippos Specialist Group.)
I had no idea, when I saw that pair in Zürich, that pygmy hogs were so endangered. At one time they ranged from Bhutan to Northern India and Nepal. But their numbers have been declining in the wild throughout the past century due to a combination of factors: expansion of human population in the Brahmaputra flood plain region, overgrazing, commercial forestry and flood control programs, taking of grass for thatching, and, especially, burning. As a result, by the late 1950s it was believed that pygmy hogs had become extinct, and they were so listed in 1961.
Ten years later J. Tessier-Yandell, a tea planter from Assam, visited Gerald Durrell at his zoo in Jersey, England, and asked if there was any special animal in Assam that he was interested in. Laughing, Durrell said, “Yes, get me a pygmy hog.” And he did! He found four that were being sold in a tea garden market! They had been captured hiding in a plantation when a small forest patch nearby was burned. It was hoped they would breed, but there were no professionals there to advise and nothing came of it, although several more wild hogs were acquired. Clearly the pygmy hog was not extinct and Durrell, delighted, made plans for a captive breeding program and acquired funding for field research.
William Oliver, at that time scientific officer for the Gerald Durrell Jersey Zoo, organized extensive field surveys in the mid-1970s, and concluded that the only remaining small groups of the pygmy hog were in Assam, in the plains to the south of the Himalayas. There were no more than a thousand individuals, and habitat destruction was continuing.
It was in 1977 that the two pygmy hogs that I met were sent to the zoo in Zürich. At first all went well: The sow farrowed and delivered healthy piglets. But then she died in an “accident.” The piglets remained healthy, but the only female among them was, unfortunately, left with her father and brothers. She was only one year old when she became pregnant (far too young) and she died in childbirth. That hope for captive breeding was thus ended. The only other pygmy hogs sent to Europe had gone to London Zoo in 1898 where both members of the pair had died without raising young.
In 1996, with a grant from the EU, the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (then the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust) got permission to start a captive breeding program in Guwahati (the capital of Assam), and six pygmy hogs were captured from the last surviving population of the species in Manas National Park.
Early in 2008, on the advice of Gerald Durrell’s wife, Lee, I called Goutam Narayan, who heads up the program. The voice that traveled to me from India was warm, and he was generous with his time. He explained that, with help from Parag Deka, the excellent veterinarian on staff who has been with them from the start, the breeding program was going well. “We followed established breeding guidelines—and common sense,” he said. Usually four or five young are born once a year. They weigh barely five or six ounces at birth, grayish pink at first, then develop faint yellow stripes by the second week. They live up to eight years in the wild but can reach ten years in captivity.
I asked Goutam if he could share any stories from his long years with the project. He told me about a local forest guard in Manas who had rescued a young hog that he had found, half frozen and almost dead, floating down a river on a cold day in October 2002. Veterinarian Parag Deka rushed to Manas and tried his best to revive the hoglet. As its condition deteriorated, it was brought to the breeding center in Guwahati where, against all odds, the little male pig miraculously recovered. He has proved a valuable addition to the breeding program, bringing new genes from the wild, and he has sired several litters during the last six years.
“From the six original individuals,” Goutam told me, “we now have about eighty individuals, divided between two centers.” He said that the hogs were ready for release into the wild, “but the problem is the continuing exploitation of the environment.” I could hear the frustration in his voice. The pygmy hog, he explained, is “a good indicator species”—very sensitive to disturbances in composition of the herbs and other plants in the grass. And then he went on to emphasize that “they must have grass for their nests.” They hide in their nests and get protection from the heat and cold. “They must have grass all the year round,” he reported, “all of them.”
Meanwhile the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, alongside the Pygmy Hog Conservation Program, had been working under the guidance of William Oliver and in partnership with the Assam Forest Department, to draw up plans for the long-term management of the species, and to find a suitable site for release. And in the spring of 2008, just four months after I spoke with Goutam, three groups of pygmy hogs, sixteen individuals in all (seven males and nine females), were taken to a facility near Nameri National Park with the goal of creating a second population of the species in the wild. There, with minimal human contact, they lived for five months in pre-release enclosures designed to replicate natural grassland habitat, getting ready for life in the wild.
At last the day came when they were moved to their final destination, the Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary, 110 miles northeast of Guwahati. After two weeks in prepared enclosures the doors were opened and they were free to leave. Their movements have been followed by direct observation at bait stations and examination of droppings and nests. Goutam told me in a recent e-mail that most of them are doing well and one of the females has even farrowed in the wild.
A major education outreach program has been initiated in the villages in the area, as it is certain that, without the cooperation of the local people, these little pigs will have no chance of surviving in the wild. At the time of writing, two other potential release sites have been found in Assam, in the Nameri and Orang National Parks. On one of my trips to India I am determined to accept Goutam’s invitation to go and meet these enchanting little pygmy hogs and the dedicated people who are working so hard to save them.