razorback

Razorback
A pair of razorbacks on Merritt Island, Florida
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Family:	Suidae
Genus:	Sus
Species:	S. scrofa
Binomial name
Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758

The Razorback, also referred to as European boar, wild boar, wild swine, feral hogs or feral swine, is a feral pig that was first introduced to the Americas in the 16th century.^[1]

Name

Razorbacks in America and Europe are essentially identical, having descended from the same stock, although the term Razorback is an Americanism and rarely used in Europe; where the animal is generally known as a wild boar.

Introduction to the Americas

Christopher Columbus is known to have intentionally released domestic swine in West Indies during his second voyage in order to provide future expeditions with a freely available food supply.

Hernando de Soto is known to have introduced Eurasian domestic swine to Florida in 1539, although Juan Ponce de León may have introduced the first pigs into mainland Florida in 1525.

The practice of introducing domestic pigs into the New World continued throughout the exploration periods of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^[1] It is thought that the Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa scrofa), which originally ranged from Great Britain to European Russia may have also been introduced.^[2]

In South America, during the early 20th century, free-ranging boars were introduced in Uruguay for hunting purposes and eventually crossed the border into Brazil sometime during the 1990s, quickly becoming an invasive species. Licensed private hunting of both feral boars and hybrids (javaporcos) was authorized from August 2005 on in the Southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul,^[3] although their presence as a pest had been already noticed by the press as early as 1994.^[4] Releases and escapes from unlicensed farms (established because of increased demand for boar meat as an alternative to pork), however, continued to bolster feral populations and by mid-2008 licensed hunts had to be expanded to the states of Santa Catarina and São Paulo.^[5]

Recently-established Brazilian boar populations are not to be confused with long established populations of feral domestic pigs (porcos monteiros), which have existed mainly in the Pantanal for more than a hundred years, along with native peccaries. The demographic dynamics of the interaction between feral pigs populations and those of the two native species of peccaries (Collared Peccary and White-lipped Peccary) is obscure and is being studied presently. It has been proposed that the existence of feral pigs could somewhat ease jaguar predation on peccary populations, as jaguars would show a preference for hunting pigs, when these are available.^[6]

As of 2008, the estimated population of 4 million feral hogs cause an estimated US$800 million of property damage a year in the U.S.^[7]

References

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