Pig-dog Hybrids

Mammalian Hybrids

EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ
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This page was a draft for a chapter on this topic that has now been published in its finished form in my book Telenothians, which is available here.

If a sow gives birth to a dog, there will be contention in the land.
—An Akkadian birth omen‡
Musée Fragonard d’Alfort
Musée Fragonard d’Alfort, the museum of the French National College of Veterinary Medicine, which lists a pig-dog in its holdings.

Caution: Reports claiming the occurrence of this distant cross, quoted below, still require DNA confirmation.

Reports about pig-dog hybrids are not abundant. Indeed, claims that other bizarre crosses involving dogs (e.g., dog-cow hybrids or human-dog hybrids) or pigs (e.g., pig-human hybrids) are quite a bit more common. Some reports about this type of cross do, however, exist. And quite a few of them are quoted here on this webpage.

For example, Christophe Degueurce, a professor of anatomy and Curator of the Musée Fragonard d’Alfort, an anatomical museum associated with the French National College of Veterinary Medicine (Écoles nationales vétérinaires d’Alfort) states in one of the pamphlets distributed by the museum that a hybrid of this type was listed in a catalog of specimens held in the their collection.

Pig-dog hybrids: Some American cases

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Aug. 2, 1896, p. 29, col. 1):

pig-dog hybrid
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Frankfort. From the Frankfort, Kentucky Roundabout (Dec. 26, 1891, p. 2, col. 3).

Petrified‡ Pups

     Mr. Richard Thomasson, of the Switzer neighborhood, this county, killed a sow about a week ago which had in her womb a litter of seven petrified puppies. Some of them had one ear like a dog and the other like a hog, all had dog’s tails and were marked like a dog. Not thinking of the value of such a freak of nature, Mr. Thomasson broke one up with a hatchet and gave the others to a little boy who destroyed them. This story may sound a little tough, but Mr. Thomasson is a truthful gentleman, and it is vouched for by others.
‡ Though the word petrified usually means “turned to stone,” it can also have the meaning of “lifeless.”)

Sayara, Colorado. Yet another, about a pig with a perfect dog’s head appeared in many U.S. newspapers in 1888. The following is from the Ravenna, Ohio Democratic Press (Jul. 26, 1888, p. 1, col. 8):

    A ranchman at Sayara, Colo. has a pig that has a perfect dog’s head, with dog’s hair covering the head and neck. Excepting this and a short and bushy tail, the rest of the animal is like a pig.

So the animal just described would have looked something like the animal owned by Farmer Comas, pictured above. An artist’s reconstruction:

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pig-dog hybrid A reconstruction based on a news notice appearing in the July 26, 1888, issue of The Democratic Press (quoted immediately above).

Eureka, Nevada. And another ostensible pig-dog hybrid was mentioned in the Abbeville, South Carolina Messenger (Aug. 3, 1886, p. 3):

    A monstrosity in the way of a medium-sized dog, with the head of a hog, is the property of a Shoshone in Eureka, Nev. The hybrid generally goes along with his nose to the ground.

So this animal, with the head of a pig and the body of a dog, which is the reverse of what was pictured above, would look something like:

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pig-dog hybrid A reconstruction based on a news notice appearing in the Aug. 3, 1886, issue of The Abbeville Messenger (quoted immediately above).

Dubuque, Iowa. Another report, about what seems to have been a pig-dog conjoined twin, appeared in the Dubuque, Iowa, Times (Mar. 18, 1884, p. 7, col. 2; access: newspaperarchive.com).

    If Tom Nast could take a peep at the monstrosity captured by Noah Faust, Sunday, and now in the possession of Mr. Siegrist, the local naturalist, he might be enabled to chisel out a picturesque diagram of the great presidential puzzle which is so irritably agitating the Democratic party...[Political comments omitted here]...The curious object found by Mr. Faust is a monstrosty in the combined shape of swine and canine. There are attached to the body seven legs, six of which are fully developed; the skin is that of a dog, of a light brown color; the nose is the completely developed snout of a pig; the head and ears are dog; the fore legs are pig; the next layout of legs project from the middle of the body and are three in number, two are all dog but the feet which retain the well formed hoof of a hog, the third member more resembling a human hand than anything else;the hind legs resemble the middle ones, while the tail is thoroughly pig. It was dead when found. It will pass through the hands of a taxidermist before being placed on exhibition.
cabbit A screenshot from one of the many cabbit videos available on the internet. Note the plantigrade condition of the hind feet, which is normal for rabbits, but not cats. (Watch the video)

An Australian pig-dog

Goulburn, New South Wales. Another report about a pig-dog hybrid appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (Jun. 13, 1931, p. 14, col. 8):

STRANGE ANIMAL

Goulburn, Friday
    On the Sydney road, nine miles from Goulburn, a man and two youths were cutting wood when a strange animal, apparently half dog and half pig, rushed at them from a creek. One of the party killed it with an axe. One local authority declared it to be a very big wombat, but others think otherwise. The animal’s head resembled that of pig. It had short, squat legs, with a heavy coat of soft silvery grey fur. The animal was more than three feet long, and had no tail.

German pig-dogs

There are several German-language reports about pig-dog hybrids.

Unzer. Johann August Unzer (1727-1799), a German physician, whose work with the central nervous system and reflexes still influences modern physiological studies, described in detail (Unzer 1752, pp. 445-448) an alleged hybrid of this type and states unequivocally (ibid., p. 445) that

The sire of this double-natured creature was a stray mongrel dog, and the dam, one of those short-legged Indian pigs one sees from time to time. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original German: “Vater dieser zweydeutigen Creatur war ein schlechter Gassenhund, und die Mutter eines von den kurzbeinigten indischen Schweinen, deren man einige findet.”]
Johann Matthäus Bechstein Bechstein
1757-1822

Bechstein. And the prolific zoologist Johann Matthäus Bechstein (Naturgeschichte der Stubenthiere 1807, p. 112) states that,

I have myself heard from a trustworthy individual that he had gotten from his bitch two pups with pig’s heads with well-defined pig snouts. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original German: Ich selbst habe auch von einer glaubwürdigen Person gehört, daß sie zwey junge Hunde mit einem Schweinskopfe und deutliche Schweinsrüssel von ihrer Hündin bekommen haben.]
An African pig-dog?

In addition, in 2012 there were widespread news stories alleging that a “dog-headed pig monster” was terrorizing residents in northern Namibia (access story).

Bechstein was one of the most enlightened naturalists of his era. He was among the first scientists to be concerned with wildlife conservation and even went so far as to call for the protection of creatures generally considered pests at the time, such as bats. Bechstein’s Bat (Myotis bechsteinii) is named in his honor.

And, of course, there are the usual freak show advertisements. For example, the newspaper Grazer Tagblatt (May 29, 1898) carried an advertisement for a sideshow that featured (in translation) “a living beast, half pig, half dog, ten months old, with four dog’s paws.”

Animals with doglike feet

The following reports, about of pigs with dog’s feet, parallel reports quoted on the dog-sheep hybrids page, which describe sheep with dog’s feet:

Auburn, Maine. An ostensible pig-dog hybrid is described by E. J. Boucher, a taxidermist in Auburn, Maine. The article appeared the Lewiston, Maine Evening Journal (May 12, 1915, p. 12). In the article, several freak animals stuffed by Boucher are described, and at the end of the article there is the following account:

Mr. Boucher tells of one freak which is positively the funniest. This animal lived to a ripe old age, and undoubtedly attracted much attention as Mr. Boucher tells the story. “I was driving through the country a while ago, when I saw an animal that acted like a dog and looked like a pig. It ran out of a house and gave a little grunt, then went back again. Naturally I was rather curious and I went into the house to inquire. The animal proved to be a pig in everything but legs and feelings. His legs were those of a dog and piggy had a dog’s soul, too. He lived in the house, wouldn't have anything to do with other pigs, and the other dogs wouldn't recognize him for one of their kind either. It was the queerest thing I ever saw, that pig, running around, lying under the stove and eating like a dog. He would run up to you just like a dog, too, and beg to be petted.”

Mount Leonard, Missouri. A report about the birth of a pig-dog hybrid appeared in the Omaha, Nebraska Daily Bee (Jun. 8, 1890, p. 11, col. 5):

    A thoroughbred Poland-China sow, owned in Mount Leonard, Mo., recently gave birth to a hairless, flesh-colored monstrosity, with head, ears, teeth and one fore foot resembling a bull pup, and the rest of its body resembling a pig. All who have seen the thing unite in declaring its resemblance to the dog family, though its skin is almost human and its body that of a hog.

Hillsboro, Ohio. Another brief item about a pig with dog paws appeared in the Hillsboro, Ohio News-Herald (Jun. 11, 1896, p. 8, col. 2):

     S. P. Michael, who lives about two miles east of here has a strange freak of nature. A pig with claws on three feet like a dog, the hind ones and one front foot. The pig is living and perfect, except the feet.

St. Croix, Indiana. And there was also a notice about a pig with dog’s paws in the Indianapolis, Indiana State Sentinel, a newspaper published in (Aug. 2, 1893, p. 5, col. 5):

Freaks of Nature

    ST. CROIX, July 25.—Special.—On the farm of Thomas Hornbeck near here this spring and summer have been born a calf without ears, a litter of seven pigs, four of which have six legs each, one of them having feet like a dog; also a chicken with two heads and two necks. The chicken died, but the other freaks are living and prospering.

Huber. In his Observationes atque cogitationes non nullae de monstris (1748, p. 6, sec. 4), Johann Jakob Huber (1707-1778), a professor of anatomy and surgery at Göttingen University, describes a specimen he thought was a fetal pig-dog hybrid. It was birthed by a sow in the village of Welheiden just outside Kassel. Huber relates the following: “Another monster birthed by the same kind of animal as in the previous section, namely a pig, is not so deformed as the one just discussed, nor is

it so unusual that it will require many words to describe. Near the end of last year, a female fetal pig was brought to me from the village of Welheiden, which lies about a mile from our city [of Kassel]. This fetus in part—the front feet, upper jaw, and rostrum—was like a dog, as was its neck. Dissection of the internal anatomy revealed nothing unusual. Nor has this birth gone unnoticed among the peasants. The man who brought me the pig, said a certain dog had many times tried to engage in coitus with the sow mother, and perhaps succeeded, and that from this intercourse the fetus just described was produced. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin.]

17th Century Pig-dogs

Describing what would have been a case of xenogenesis, the German physician Christian Franz Paullini (1688, p. 49) mentions a case in which a sow impregnated by a shepherd dog supposedly farrowed five well-formed puppies with shaggy white hair.

Fortunio Liceti (De monstris, 1634, p. 21) describes a dog-pig hybrid born in the Duchy of Lorraine in 1572. It was a conjoined twin in which two separate pig bodies were joined by a canine head. Paré (1641, p. 653) described it as “la teste d’un vray chien” (“the true head of a dog”).

Mating

mother dog adopts pig Above: A news report from page 10 of the April 5, 1906 issue of The Ward County Independent, a newspaper published in Minot, North Dakota (source)

It is certainly true that pigs and dogs are sometimes willing to mate. In connection with this fact, several pieces of information involving dogs and pigs seem worth relating.

The first is a story reported to me by my wife, who during the course of her work visited a farm north of Atlanta, Georgia. The family there had years before given an orphaned domestic piglet to a Doberman Pinscher bitch to raise with her litter. She successfully suckled the pig, and when he grew up to be a boar, he would have nothing to do with other pigs and was treated as a dog by his owners. And he actually behaved like a dog. He spent his days and nights with the dogs of the farm and acted as if he were a watchdog when strangers arrived, and even attempted to bark along with the dogs. When my wife visited, this pig leaped up on her with his front legs in excitement, much as a dog does, and almost knocked her down, because, of course, he was much larger than any dog. So this is an interesting case of a pig acting like a dog, and choosing dogs rather than pigs as social companions. One can easily imagine the consequences when it came time to mate.

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Video about a dog who adopted and nursed a litter of piglets. Mammals often imprint on the animal that nursed them, that is, they seek a mate of the same kind after they reach sexual maturity. So in this case these pigs, nursed by a dog, when they reached maturity, would probably seek dogs as mates.

pig-dog hybrids A news notice about a sow voluntarily adopting and raising a puppy (Source: The Provemont, Michigan, Courier (Sep. 8, 1916, p. 4, col. 4)
Buffon Buffon

A second relevant bit of information, which provides an example of the willingness of dogs and pigs actually to mate, is related by the great naturalist the Comte de Buffon (Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière: Supplément, vol. 3, 1776, pp. 35-36): “Nothing seems further from the amiable character of a dog than the gross, brute instinct of a pig, and the form of the bodies in these two animals is as different as their characters. Nevertheless, I have two examples of violent passion between a dog and a sow. In 1774,

during the course of the summer, a spaniel of the largest size, which was kept next to the sty of a sow in heat, seems to have been struck with a great passion for his neighbor. They were shut up together for several days, and all the servants of the house witnessed the mutual ardor exhibited by these two animals. The dog’s efforts to mate with the swine were both prodigious and many times repeated, but the incompatibility of their genitalia prevented the union. The same thing happened several years earlier in a neighboring place so that the event was nothing new to most of those who were witnesses. Animals then, even of very different species, can often develop an affection for each other, and can therefore under certain circumstances be affected by a powerful passion, for it is certain in these two cases that the only thing that prevented the sexual union of a dog with a sow, was simply the fact that their genitals would not fit together. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]

There are also various YouTube videos documenting the fact that dogs and pigs are sometimes willing to mate. The usual situation seems to involve a male dog mounting a sow.

Table of contents >>

Bibliography >>

Biology Dictionary >>

‡ Source: Freedman 2017, p. 84.

By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).