The result of a crossbreed, the Canadian "super pig" threatens fauna and flora in the USA.
The damage caused by wild boar has been immense in recent years.
Fear is raging in North America: For decades, wild boars have been troubling flora and fauna in the USA, devouring crops, spreading diseases and even killing deer and elk.
But now the so-called Canadian “super pig” is also threatening the region.
It is described as a giant, "incredibly intelligent, extremely elusive" animal capable of surviving in cold climates by burrowing and burrowing in the snow.
As the British
Guardian
reports, the super pig is the result of a cross between a domestic pig and a wild boar.
The approximately 6 million wild boars in the USA have already caused damage amounting to 1.5 billion dollars every year.
In some parts of the country, the proliferation of the animals has sparked a kind of pig-hunting industry, raising thousands of dollars to machine-gun hogs.
Canadian 'super pig': domestic pig-wild boar hybrid threatens North America
The hogs are in "direct competition for food with our native species," Michael Marlow, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture's national feral damage management program, tells the
Guardian
.
They kill young fawns and are known nest robbers, thus endangering turkeys and quail.
The environmental damage is also considerable: destruction of trees, pollution of water bodies.
They pose a "human health and safety hazard," says Marlow.
Because the pig is able to transmit viruses such as the flu to humans.
The science magazine
National Geographic
even reported that pigs could produce a novel flu virus.
Super pig moves from Canada to the USA: animals are not actually native to North America
Pigs are not native to the US, they have only lived there since the 16th century.
Only in the past few decades have they become a problem.
"They lived a harmless existence until three or four decades ago when we started seeing these rapid spreads into areas we didn't know before," says Marlow.
This is due to the deliberate release of pigs by humans who wanted to establish a hunting population, there are now six million animals in 34 states in the USA.
Wild boars are also a relatively new problem in Canada. Until 2002 there were hardly any animals in the country, but now their numbers have exploded.
This is also due to the new super pig, which weighs up to 300 kilograms and is able to survive in temperatures as low as -50 °C.
In view of the serious damage that the pigs have caused so far, scientists in the USA and Canada have made initial attempts to get rid of them.
Larger groups could be caught in traps, in the USA attempts were made to poison the wild pigs.
But the researchers do not assume that they will be able to capture all the pigs.
It is now a few years too late for that.
The extent of the damage caused by the Canadian super pigs in the USA is still completely unclear.
(fmu)
List of rubrics: © Nicolas Armer/dpa
