Cotton Branch Farm Animal Sanctuary in Leesville, South Carolina is seeking volunteers to cuddle pigs and, eventually, adopt the animals as pets. The organizations rescued more than 200 pigs from a Kentucky property about a year ago. After suffering abuse and neglect, the pigs need more human time before they are ready for their forever homes.

"These pigs weren't socialized because they lived in such large numbers," said Joshua Carpenter Costner, the sanctuary's director of operations. "We noticed how quickly a lot of them were coming around when we spent time with them, and in order to find them homes, we thought it was a good idea to have people start coming out."

According to the ad posted on Facebook, "belly scratches, cookies, sitting with, and even just talking to our pig friends can get them ready for their new home."

(CNN)

Does loving-on sweet little faces like these seem like a good time? Then we have some GREAT news for you! We need piggy cuddlers!Visit https://t.co/ukyFtZ09Dt to sign up!Can't come visit? You can still make a difference in their https://t.co/mcFHyzcQz7 https://t.co/MkPVXFD686 pic.twitter.com/c6euFXjNp9

— Cotton Branch Farm Sanctuary (@cottonbranch) January 29, 2020

In Sultanpur, India, a wild boar caused chaos at a gas station. Employees were no match for the animal's piggish behavior and later it apparently attacked a girl nearby.

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From the University of Saskatchewan:

Wild pigs typically weigh between 120 and 250 pounds. They have around six piglets per litter, per year.

They are adapted to very cold temperatures, and can breed in any season, living in pigloos burrowed into the snow.  Sexually mature within four-to-eight months, they feed on all common types of farmers’ crops, including corn, wheat and canola. They also eat insects, birds, reptiles and small mammals.

“The growing wild pig population is not an ecological disaster waiting to happen—it is already happening,” said USask’s Ryan Brook, lead researcher for the Canadian Wild Pig Project, a Canada-wide research program, and Aschim’s supervisor.

Even the New York Times is getting in on the pigloo action (although it has yet to be noted on the Times First Said Twitter bot):

Many experts thought the pigs couldn’t thrive in cold climates. But they burrow into the snow in winter, creating so-called pigloos — a tunnel or cave with a foot or two of snow on top for insulation. Many have developed thick coats of fur.

Now they are poised to invade states along the border, threatening to establish a new beachhead in this country.

“It’s concerning that Canada isn’t doing anything about it,” said Maggie Nutter, one of 80 concerned ranchers and farmers who met recently near Sweet Grass, Mont., to discuss the potential swine invasion. “What do you do to get them to control their wild hog population?”

It seems that not even an AR-15 nor a Jason Isbell song can stop these feral hogs from burrowing. Read the rest

In China, technology firms are working with the government to push voice and facial recognition to help pigs, many of which have been dying from a swine disease that's sweeping the country. Read the rest

A man in Elyria, OH was walking home at 5:26am Saturday morning when he got spooked. Someone - or something – was following him. When he noticed it was a pig, he freaked out and called the police.

Of course the cops thought he was either really drunk or hallucinating. But he wasn't. The frightened gentleman just didn't like being followed by a pig.

The police ended up returning the animal, whose name is Zoey, back to its owner.

Phew. Close call. But the man survived the frightful morning without a scratch and lived to tell about it.

Via CBS

When an Ohio man told police he was being followed by a pig, they thought he was drunk. In fact, he was sober –– and being followed by a pig. https://t.co/cSjZv8jlQp pic.twitter.com/r5OFPRk4fU

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 20, 2018

Image: North Ridgeville Police Department Read the rest

Here's what we've learned: an enormous swine may enjoy having his back rubbed, but that doesn't mean it will allow a large primate to jump on it in hope of a ride around the pen.

No you can't

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Haven’t we all seen a lot of pigs on the parkway? You’re driving along and happen to notice that the person in the next lane has their digit buried halfway up their snout, digging for truffles. And don’t ask me about what happens next—I just can’t deal with it. I can understand when 3-year-olds engage in this type of behavior, but adults just should not be doing this.

What you don’t expect on the parkway are real pigs … pink, porcine, and on the run!

An unhappy situation on a Japanese highway: a truck full of big fat piggies are on their way to meet their destiny when—all of a sudden—jailbreak! The truck crashes into a stalled car and the pigs make a mad dash for freedom, little hooves tapping on the asphalt, except they’re on a busy highway and there’s no place to go. The scene was captured by an NHK News helicopter.

In many countries there would be a grassy median in the center, or an easy getaway off to some grazing on the side of the road. But in Japan highways are often elevated, and since they pass directly next to homes, there are large sound deflecting walls on most of them. So, alas, the piggies were trapped and made the best of their few hours of freedom by lounging.

No pigs were injured in the making of this post. All the rascals were rounded up and returned to a new truck, where their journey to the great beyond resumed. Read the rest

An oldie but goodie. I was expecting the GoPro logo to pop up at the end.

"Camera falls from a sky diving airplane and lands on my property in my pig pen. I found the camera 8 months later and viewed this video."

(via Kottke)

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I’d like you to meet a man that I've worked with for over a decade.   His artist name is Ekundayo and I'll be darned if I know what else to call him.  He pours his life into his work - it's everything to him.

His painting style style is emotion filled, kinetic, and unforgettable.

I met Ekundayo in 2005 and since then, I’ve seen his work pop up on billboards, in movies and on murals around the globe.  

The content he chooses to create goes beyond our comfort zone, and because of that, it's impossible to mistake his artistic fingerprint.

Each of his art pieces drips with emotion and has amazing stories buried within them.

In 2007, Ekundayo helped our company create a mural for Trent Reznor’s, Year Zero. The piece was painted in London with other artists Johnny Rodriguez, Josh Clay and Mike Maxwell.

Reznor's mural was stolen 2 days after it was completed and to this day, fans around the world are on the lookout for it.

By the time the Year Zero project was complete, Ekundayo had become very special to me and as his technique evolved, I marveled at his ability to quickly fill vast spaces with his unique vision.

I'd love to have a peek at the sketchbook in his head and see the art before it unfolds.

My friend is truly a genius with a paintbrush and you can check out the rest of his work at Ekundayo.com. 

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Adorable!

Interspecies friends.

[via] Read the rest

As Herman Yung says, Sung Jin Jang's animated version of pig processing is "a combination of cute and cuddly and disgustingly horrifying." Read the rest

Los Angeles County's Animal Care and Control department is investigating "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan after he allowed a dog to attack and bite a pet pig on his show, Cesar 911.

In the February 26 show, Millan was working with Simon, an aggressive French bulldog-terrier mix with a history of attacking his owner's potbellied pigs and other animals, a National Geographic Channels spokesman confirmed. The episode showed Simon biting the ear of one of the pigs during a training session. Complaints started after the episode aired. There have also been calls for the show to be canceled.

Simon killed two pigs prior to the show; Cesar unleashed it in another pig's presence to demonstrate the effectiveness of his dominating approach to animal correction.

National Geographic backed Millan and promised to co-operate with the investigation. Chris Albert, SVP Global Communications and Talent Relations for National Geographic Channels, wrote that the pig "nipped by [French Bulldog mix] Simon was tended to immediately afterward, healed quickly and showed no lasting signs of distress."

Cesar Millan has dedicated his life to helping dogs and to showing how even the most difficult “problem dog” can be rescued and rehabilitated. In a recent episode of the Nat Geo WILD series Cesar 911, Cesar works with an aggressive French bulldog/terrier mix named Simon, who has a history of attacking other animals, including his owner’s pet pot-bellied pigs. A short clip from the episode was shared online and showed Simon chasing a pig and nipping its ear, causing the ear to bleed.

Anita Krajnc, of Toronto, was charged with criminal mischief when she gave drinking water to pigs being transported to a slaughterhouse on a hot day. Read the rest

BGI, the genomics institute in Shenzhen credited with a number of breakthroughs in genomic sequencing, is applying its expertise on making tiny pigs for pets. According to Nature.com the pigs will weigh about 15 kilograms when they mature.

At the [Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit in China] the institute quoted a price tag of 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) for the micropigs, but that was just to "help us better evaluate the market”, says Yong Li, technical director of BGI’s animal-science platform. In future, customers will be offered pigs with different coat colours and patterns, which BGI says it can also set through gene editing.

YouTuber Cassetteboy remixes snippets of David Cameron's numbing enunciation into a song about his recent troubles in the press.

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Bently is a rescued baby pot-bellied pig who lived at the EARTH Animal Sanctuary. On Feb 23 a seizure left him in a state of shock and he was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. The meningitis has left him blind. Loud hospital noises are scary to him, so a worker at the hospital sings to him every day to comfort him.

Without any huffing and puffing he was let into my heart.

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