A LITTLE PIG GOES A LONG WAY

India's pygmy hog is vanishing from its grasslands, just as it is needed the most

- PARAG JYOTI DEKA

This tiny hog may not be your usual neighbourhood porcine resident.

Pygmy hog or Porcula salvania, as scientists have named it, is the smallest and rarest species of wild pig: just 60-65 cm long, 25 cm high and, in the case of adult males, a mere 8-9 kg heavy. Compared with a wild boar, it is 10 to 15 times less bulky, with a more streamlined body to match.

Small they may be, pygmy hogs are crucial to the ecosystems they inhabit. Today, they survive only in the grasslands of Assam's Manas and Orang national parks, where they are known as nol gahori or takuri borah in Assamese and oma thakhri in Bodo. Historically, they ranged across a narrow belt of grassland south of the Himalayan foothills in Uttar Pradesh, Nepal, Bihar, north Bengal and Assam.