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Roger BW 😷

@futurebird Perhaps also: degree of change due to domestication - perhaps the modern farm pig is closer to its wild ancestor than ditto cow because it didn't take as much work to turn it into a farmable animal?

4 comments
Eva Chanda

@RogerBW
I think you're onto something: look at cats, they easily go feral. Maybe intelligence is also a factor. Pigs are very smart.

@futurebird

PernilleMsarup

@futurebird @RogerBW @echanda more intelligent, more fecundt, shorter generation time (-> faster evolution), than cows. In addition fewer natural predators than chickens. Cows can go feral too but is easier to track and eliminate.

Leszek Ciesielski

@pms @futurebird @RogerBW @echanda Also significantly less domesticated than cows or chickens (though chickens easily go feral in jungles, closer to their natural habitat). Even in late medieval (and in some places, later) pigs were semi-wild, kept in open forest, not necessarily enclosed. Cows are so domesticated that AFAIK we're not even still sure which animal they came from.

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