BEGUES, TAKING CARE OF ENVIRONMENT & PEOPLE

Today, The Grandma has finished her formation with Sara in Begues.

 

It has been a great pleasure meeting this wonderful woman, and learning a lot from her.

 

They have been talking about taking care and protecting nature, specially its flora and fauna.

Good luck, Sara, and see you soon!

The wild boar (Sus scrofa), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania.

The species is now one of the widest-ranging mammals in the world, as well as the most widespread suiform. It has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its wide range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats.

It has become an invasive species in part of its introduced range. Wild boars probably originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene and outcompeted other suid species as they spread throughout the Old World.

As of 2005, up to 16 subspecies are recognized, which are divided into four regional groupings based on skull height and lacrimal bone length.

The species lives in matriarchal societies consisting of interrelated females and their young, both male and female. Fully grown males are usually solitary outside the breeding season. The wolf is the wild boar's main predator in most of its natural range except in the Far East and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where it is replaced by the tiger and Komodo dragon respectively.

The wild boar has a long history of association with humans, having been the ancestor of most domestic pig breeds and a big-game animal for millennia. Boars have also re-hybridized in recent decades with feral pigs; these boar-pig hybrids have become a serious pest wild animal in the Americas and Australia.

More information: AZ Animals

As true wild boars became extinct in Great Britain before the development of Modern English, the same terms are often used for both true wild boar and pigs, especially large or semi-wild ones. The English boar stems from the Old English bar, which is thought to be derived from the West Germanic bairaz, of unknown origin.

Boar is sometimes used specifically to refer to males, and may also be used to refer to male domesticated pigs, especially breeding males that have not been castrated.

Sow, the traditional name for a female, again comes from Old English and Germanic; it stems from Proto-Indo-European, and is related to the Latin: sus and Greek hus, and more closely to the New High German Sau. The young may be called piglets or boarlets.

The animals' specific name scrofa is Latin for sow.

With the exception of domestic pigs in Timor and Papua New Guinea, which appear to be of Sulawesi warty pig stock, the wild boar is the ancestor of most pig breeds.

Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000-12,700 BCE in the Near East in the Tigris Basin, being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans. 

Remains of pigs have been dated to earlier than 11,400 BCE in Cyprus. Those animals must have been introduced from the mainland, which suggests domestication in the adjacent mainland by then. There was also a separate domestication in China, which took place about 8,000 years ago.

DNA evidence from sub-fossil remains of teeth and jawbones of Neolithic pigs shows that the first domestic pigs in Europe had been brought from the Near East. This stimulated the domestication of local European wild boars, resulting in a third domestication event with the Near Eastern genes dying out in European pig stock. Modern domesticated pigs have involved complex exchanges, with European domesticated lines being exported in turn to the ancient Near East.

More information: Animalia

Historical records indicate that Asian pigs were introduced into Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Domestic pigs tend to have much more developed hindquarters than their wild boar ancestors, to the point where 70% of their body weight is concentrated in the posterior, which is the opposite of wild boar, where most of the muscles are concentrated on the head and shoulders.

The wild boar is a bulky, massively built suid with short and relatively thin legs. The trunk is short and robust, while the hindquarters are comparatively underdeveloped. The region behind the shoulder blades rises into a hump and the neck is short and thick to the point of being nearly immobile. The animal's head is very large, taking up to one-third of the body's entire length.

The wild boar produces a number of different sounds which are divided into three categories:

-Contact calls. Grunting noises which differ in intensity according to the situation. Adult males are usually silent, while females frequently grunt and piglets whine. When feeding, boars express their contentment through purring. Studies have shown that piglets imitate the sounds of their mother, thus different litters may have unique vocalisations.

-Alarm calls. Warning cries emitted in response to threats. When frightened, boars make loud huffing ukh! ukh! sounds or emit screeches transcribed as gu-gu-gu.

-Combat calls. High-pitched, piercing cries.

Its sense of smell is very well developed to the point that the animal is used for drug detection in Germany. Its hearing is also acute, though its eyesight is comparatively weak, lacking color vision and being unable to recognise a standing human 10–15 metres away.

More information: Animal Corner

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig.
You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

George Bernard Shaw