Super pigs don’t wear capes and they don’t leap buildings in a single bound, but they do eat almost everything in their path, and they are spreading across Canada and now into the United States.  Dr. Ryan Brook, lead researcher with USask’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project describes them as the worst invasive species on the planet.

He explains that this all began in the 1980s when there was a push for producers to diversify, which led to wild boar farms for meat and fenced hunting.  Then, owners were encouraged to cross breed pigs with wild boar to give these hybrid animals a heavy coat of fur, make them larger, and able to have larger and more frequent litters – basically supercharging them. But the market never really took off, so around the year 2001, people started cutting the fence and letting them go.

Brook notes that these wild pigs, or what he calls super pigs, eat almost any kind of crop. They dig up roots, feed on lots of newborn animals including goslings and ducklings, and even on deer and elk calves. In fact there is evidence that these super pigs have taken down a white-tailed deer.

There have been some efforts to get them under control in Saskatchewan through trapping, but he believes the opportunity to eradicate them completely has been missed because it didn’t happen quick enough.  Even with the trapping, pigs are still spreading out of control. Brook notes that any pig or boar you see in the wild is most likely a hybrid of wild boar and the domestic pig. Anyone who spots these super pigs or catches them on a trail camera is asked to contact Dr. Brook: https://www.facebook.com/WildPigResearch; ryan.brook@usask.ca.