麻豆传媒

Messy eaters: pigs鈥� scavenging leaves us feeling ambivalent(Image: Denis Dialled/Agence VU/Camera Press)

IN 1922, the president of the American Museum of Natural History was tricked by a pig. After receiving a 10-million-year-old molar sent by a Midwestern fossil hunter, Henry Fairfield Osborn published a paper claiming that the tooth belonged to an 鈥渁nthropoid ape鈥�. There was just one problem. Closer examination revealed that it came from an extinct relative of swine.

When the claim was discredited, creationists made Osborn鈥檚 鈥淣ebraska Man鈥� into an icon of Darwinian folly. For Mark Essig, Osborn鈥檚 error illustrates something deeper. Pigs and people have similar teeth because they have similarly omnivorous diets, he observes in Lesser Beasts. 鈥淎nd because pigs and people eat the same foods, they evolved to form a symbiotic connection.鈥�

According to Essig, this symbiosis began some 10,000 years ago, as humans started settling in villages and pigs began scavenging their waste. The pigs ate well and people got free sanitation 鈥� and they also had a nutritious meal when the pigs grew fat on their rubbish.

As civilisation grew more complicated, so did people鈥檚 relationship with pigs. Over time, Sus scrofa domesticus became the most divisive of species, deemed by some societies to be the greatest source of sustenance while others considered it the most noxious of creatures.

Essig鈥檚 account is fascinating, full of erudition and nuance. He traces societal changes from the pharaohs to Walmart, using the pig. Equally, he uses history to enlarge our understanding of the domestic pig.

The high and low status of the pig, Essig believes, both derive from its 鈥渁lchemical powers鈥� to turn garbage into food. The pig is so omnivorous that it thrives practically anywhere, from deep forest to farming village to inner city, fending for itself.

鈥淭he high and low status of the pig both derive from its 鈥榓lchemical powers鈥� to turn garbage into food鈥�

This self-sufficiency was ideal for families, who could keep a few pigs with little work, but not for the ruling elites. For example, says Essig, when the pharaohs needed a supply of food to help build the Pyramids, cattle and sheep were herded in from the provinces, but pigs got left off the menu as they were too independent. 鈥淧riests and bureaucrats, who dined on lamb and beef, came to despise pigs,鈥� says Essig: pork was for the rural poor.

Pigs鈥� omnivorous diet was another major reason for their vilification. As well as truffles and scraps, pigs will consume human faeces and corpses. That makes them 鈥渁 vector for the unholy鈥�, writes Essig, and repugnant to many, notably Jews and Muslims.

Today we subject pigs to harsh industrial farming, not only because they can survive the worst of environments but also because they are widely seen as impure and the food of the poor.

Essig thinks pigs鈥� plight would improve if we could get over 鈥渢he millennium-old idea that pork should be cheap鈥�. His prescription may be simplistic, but his fine book can only boost our image of Sus scrofa domesticus.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淟et鈥檚 go the whole hog鈥�