Consider the pig: intelligent mammals with advanced reasoning faculties — or machines for turning leftovers into yummy bacon, ham, pork and sausages? We’ve looked at hogs, but what of your common or garden oinker?
Like so many of the random thoughts that make their way into this blog, there’s no way we can conduct a thorough forensic examination of the many and various appearances of the porcine genus in our culture and language. But that’s never stopped us before, so let’s have at it.
This line of enquiry started when I was out cycling the other day. On the return leg of a rolling (read bloody hilly) out-and-back route, when the blood sugar runs critically low and the eyes dim from sweat and agony, I noticed with a start that the great beasts inhabiting the paddock next to the road were not cattle, as first perceived, but large, dark, extremely solid pigs. Big pigs, capable of passing for cattle to the superficial eye. I’m not saying I cried wee wee wee all the way home, but it was a close-run thing.
And this got me thinking. Here we are, the so-called masters of the animal kingdom, strutting about in a world that’s rapidly becoming uninhabitable, infecting each other with nasty viruses and finding new and creative ways of exterminating each other in wars and diverse conflicts. But we’re in it up to the eyebrows with our humble friend, the pig.
Generally, pigs get a pretty good press. They’re cute and smart – think Pinky and Perky, Porky the, and the Three Little. The latter triumvirate of porkers totally outfoxed (bear with me here) the big bad wolf, did they not? (I’m not here to diss the first two who built their homes of straw and sticks – not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.)
What character, chosen for her warmth, generosity and smarts, is entrusted with inculcating these same attributes in our tender young? Peppa – a pig in all including name. Or there’s Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web: admittedly, a somewhat neurotic and querulous piglet, requiring lessons in the Circle of Life from a benign spider with a sharp line in web design. Not unlike Babe, hamming it up on the silver screen, who rather disconcertingly stole jobs from dogs.
Of course, the slightly darker sub-text which drives the plots of many of these fables is the pig’s legendary deliciousness in a cornucopia of ways: the Three Little are pursued by a wolf determined to feast on their flesh; Wilbur is saved from the sausage machine by Charlotte making him famous; Babe is saved from becoming Christmas dinner by her ability to work with others and herd sheep.
There’s no escaping it: leaving aside those who cleave to the vegan or vegetarian ideals, or those observing kosher, pigs probably owe their longevity as a species to the fact that we – humans as a species — dearly love to incorporate them into our diet as one or more of the major food groups. It’s quite impressive that this one humble animal can provide us with so many different varieties of deliciousness – a versatility they may regret as individuals but which has embedded their kind into the cultures of human communities for aeons. Here’s one I met in Vietnam.
Attached to this like a sausage link on its string is of course their own omnivorous diet: swine make good sense for farming because they’ll consume all manner of leftovers and waste, this adding a kind of sustainable efficiency to their many virtues. Think of how this quality has worked its way into our language: quite bluntly, we’re pigs if we eat a lot in an unmannerly fashion; this kind of eating is ‘pigging out’ or ‘hogging’ your grub.
And their manifest comfort in their sties, where they’ll wallow with a satisfied smile in mud and other unspeakable substances, means ‘pigsty’ has been extended to anyone’s messy bedroom or related domestic environment. And of course, the slob who’s ‘happy as a pig in shit’. Yet they’re nimble, especially when adequately lubricated, ‘like a greased pig’.
And as mentioned, pigs are reputed to be far more brainy than we generally give them credit for. Wilbur and Babe’s defining characteristic is that they are smart. And, veering toward more negative literary depictions, it’s not by mistake that Orwell chose pigs to represent the corrupt cadres of the revolution in Animal Farm.
Which brings us to another attribute of the porcine breed that binds them to us alongside their intellectual gifts: among those peoples who for whatever reason have consumed human flesh, it’s said that our tenderness and fatty marbling are most similar to swine flesh.
That’s why cannibals refer to their human dinners as ‘long pig’ – and also because when spitted over an open fire, apparently we even look similar. Which is why we’re now also using the poor swine for medical experiments, including transplanting their hearts into ourselves.
Here we’ve only looked at the domesticated variety – wild boar are a whole other thing (just think of the odious Pumba). When you look at it, the humble domesticated pig is just one of those mammals, like dogs, horses and cattle, that just give and give. And are we thankful? Or is this all just pearls before swine? Yes, we’re guilty of taking them for granted.
So let’s undertake to offer a short prayer to Varaha, boar-like avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, the ‘preserver’ of the Hindu triad, who (like salt in a succulent bratwurst or piquant chorizo) ensures that the universe remains safe from decay, trauma and destruction. Will it make a difference? Regrettably, it’s more likely pigs might fly.
