Pig-horse Hybrids
Mammalian Hybrids
EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ
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In some places in Illyria pigs have solid hooves.†
—Pliny the Elder
Natural History, 11:106 |
A pig mounting a donkey (a similar mating to pig x horse).
Years of searching for reports about mammalian hybrids have thus far revealed only a few brief descriptions of a cross between a pig and a horse. However, those that do exist describe local events that could easily have been verified by any resident of the community. Therefore it is not easy to see how a hoax could have been perpetrated, or with what motive.
Horses lie down from time to time, and while in that position they are accessible for mounting even by short-legged animals like pigs. Indeed, smaller equids such as ponies and burros can be mounted by boars in the ordinary fashion. Boars are quite indiscriminate in their choice of mate, as documented by a variety of YouTube videos—which show them mating with a wide variety of other kinds of animals. And much the same conclusion might be inferred by the wide variety of crosses listed for the domestic pig on the pig hybrids page.
Pig mounting a frame with a tube attached for the collection of semen.
They are even willing to mount inanimate objects, for example, a metal frame with a plastic tube of the appropriate diameter attached (image at right).
So it would be in no way surprising for a boar to choose to mate with a mare, if she were lying down or some other opportunity offered. And among the innumerable times that a boar has introduced his semen into the reproductive tract of a reclining mare during the last ten thousand years of agriculture, might not some few of these strange unions have been fruitful?
Other
Artiodactyl-equid Crosses:
In any case, at a few reports do say so. The following brief notice appeared in the Dodge City, Kansas, Globe-Republican (Feb. 11, 1892, p. 5, col. 1):
According to a subsequent report in the same newspaper (May 23, 1892, p. 4, col. 2), the Stubbs brothers were race horse breeders who had a farm two miles east of Dodge City.
Another report, about a viable hybrid, appeared in Camden, New Jersey, Morning Post (Jul. 19, 1934, p. 56, col. 7):
BORN TO MARE IN N. Y.
The freak, born to a mare on a farm here, has the head of a pig, breathes and snorts like a pig, but has long legs and body of a colt. The animal is black with white marks on its head and nose.
If you know of any other records of such a cross, please contact the website.
A dog-cow hybrid?
By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).
†. Barrier (1884, p. 492) says Pliny uses the term ungula solida exclusively to refer to the undivided equine hoof.