Canadian 'super pigs' are likely to invade the northern US

Feral 'super pigs' in Canada could soon trample across the US border.

- SASCHA PARE

The feral pigs are a mixed population of domestic swine and wild boar, which were introduced to Canada in the late 1980s for meat and recreational shooting. Keepers released the boars and some pigs when the market for boar meat plunged in the early 2000s, thinking that the animals wouldn't survive the harsh Canadian prairie winter and deep snow. But instead the pigs thrived. "These pigs have high reproductive rates, are very mobile and have a high capacity to spread," said Ryan Brook, a professor of animal and poultry science at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. As it turns out, the pigs are also resistant to the cold, so Brook and his colleagues dubbed them 'super pigs'.