Wooly mountain hog
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| Wooly mountain hog | |
| Porco lanoso | |
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| A Montagnera woman feeding a mountain hog. |
The wooly mountain hog is a species of semi-domesticated Rossan pigs native to the Montesuvian mountain range. It is one of the two major porcine species on La Rossa, alongside the black-tailed bush hog, which lives along the coastline. Historically, the pastoral inhabitants of the island have herded the animals, a practice that still survives to this day, albeit in a smaller capacity. Although they have never been fully domesticated, they are believed to have been herded long before written history, with evidence of cohabitation with humans going as far back as 5000 TT. The wooly mountain hog, as its name suggests, grows a thick coat of curly around its body, a trait tied to the high-altitude harsh cold environment it finds itself in.
Description
The wooly mountain hog is an omnivorous animal with a long, outstretched snout, specialized for sniffing out food and burrowing into the ground in search of nutrients. Feeding on a diet of wild tuber plants, roots and bulbs, as well as small rodents, insects and reptiles buried in the ground. Their jaw hosts developed canine teeth, as well as rear teeth made for crushing, indicating a diverse diet. They are a quadripedal animal with four toes on each leg, with the larger central toes being load-bearing. Though relatively thin, their legs are capable of supporting the animal's weight and of allowing a running speed of up to 35 km/h. Their protruding tusks, more prominent in males, are primarily used as a self-defense mechanism, being greatly injurous and possibly lethal when the animal rams at threats at full speed. Curling around as they grow, it occasionally happens that older animals run into issues as the tusks begin to protrude into their heads, potentially leading to death as they attempt to grow into the skull. The maximum lifespan of the species exceeds 12 years, though most tend to die long before that.
Herding
Wooly mountain hogs have long been utilized by humans, with signs of cohabitation tracing as far back as 5000 TT, according to archaeological records which have seen the copresence of human and pig bones at ancient mass gravesites. Mostly inhabited by mountainous, pastoral people at the time, the Rossans of the period are believed to have mostly subsisted by foraging edible plants and herding animals such as the wooly mountain hog. Primarily being bred for their red meat, populations with quality hair are also sheared for their wool, used to make traditional-style clothing. Their tusks can also be used to make various sorts of decorative objects and trinkets. Despite the several millennia since then, customs have seemingly changed little since the ancient adoption of the practice. Considerably harder to fully domesticate than their coastal neighbor despite practices of selective breeding, they are considered to be only semi-domesticated, capable of being herded for nomadic grazing of pastures while not particularly fit for sedentary farms. As a result, over time the practice of their herding has decreased sharply as the urban populations of the island grew, due to the incapacity to produce meat at scale, instead being replaced by industrial farms of the domesticated forms of the black-tailed bush hog. In practice, today the only population that continues to herd them are the Montagneri, a Rossan ethnic group characterized by their traditional, pastoralist lifestyle in the Montesuvian mountains. With many of them living in small groups of hoggards, they tend to and follow herds that are usually sized in proportion to their own needs. Infrequently, they sometimes visit larger cities for the purposes of trade for items they aren't capable of obtaining otherwise, sometimes bartering meat or wool for them. The meat's rougher taste and texture makes it a slight curiosity among restaurants that serve it, though many such places fake claims of selling it by using untenderized bush hog meat instead.
Breeding
Female wooly mountain hogs become sexually mature at approximately 4 months of age and come into estrus every 12-16 days if not fertilized. The gestation period typically lasts between 92 and 104 days. Typically highly social animals, they tend to live in tightly-knit herds involving several "families" of animals, much unlike their more solitary cousins. They do not tend to live monogamously, but rather promiscuously, with partners changing between years, though they tend to stay the same during a single breeding season. Partners tend to come either from the same social grouping only when no other option remains, with sexual partners usually coming from other herds the hogs happen to meet. Yearly fighting contests between males provide a somewhat dynamic hierarchy as each boar gets repeated chances at securing mating with higher-valued females, with changes in relative hierarchy due to death, injury, disease or simply an increase in fighting ability being frequent. At the end of breeding season, the various herds once again disperse across the mountains, with some pigs occasionally changing which group they are a part of. Within such social groups, boars tend to be responsible for protecting the group from predators, by chasing them off before members of the group get picked off. Several males tend to circle a group at the same time to minimize the chances of such an event. Sows, which remain closer to the center of such herds, surround the piglets, who slowly grow over the course of the year into adulthood. They tend to stay with the same herd until the next breeding season.
Among pastoral herds, despite practices of selective breeding, it occasionally happens that during breeding season they come into contact with wild herds, producing hybrid offspring. Nicknamed "ruffians", such piglets tend to grow up into hogs with somewhat thicker and straighter hair than the selectively bred wooly hogs, and result in tougher meat that is more difficult to chew. While some hoggards have adopted the practice, with some specifically seeking out wild herds to enrich the breeding pool, others have set up scouts who remain active during breeding season to ensure their own herd steers clear of the other ones.