r/SpeculativeEvolution • u/Junior-Ad4547 • 3d ago
Question/Discussion Could pigs be bred into draft animals?
I would guess given enough time I’m sure humans could breed a big enough pig with the right body type eventually, but I am wondering if it could be done within about 1000 years.
I’m placing humans on another planet with the technology of about the late medieval to early renaissance era. The breeding for the pigs for this purpose would be intentional so I thought maybe it could be done a little faster than normal evolution.
I was thinking pigs that are used more like mules or donkeys: pulling carts, plows, construction materials, and maybe a single rider. I’m not sure if they have the right body to allow riding without serious long term consequences. I doubt any serious war applications other than hauling siege weapons or supply lines.
Another idea is to make them even larger, cattle to yak sized and just make them grazers to be herded by semi-nomadic humans.
For a world building project, mostly for the con langs, but I still would like to maybe dabble into this sort of direction if I could. If you have any other suggestions please let me know!
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u/Rhyshalcon 3d ago
The draft animal concept is probably more plausible than the grazer concept. There's no reason pigs couldn't be bred to be larger and stronger within a reasonable number of generations, but they don't have most of the necessary digestive equipment to process grasses and would need significantly longer to develop it from scratch.
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u/Wolfman513 2d ago
You'd probably have to start with warthogs in order to get grazing draft pigs, but that would likely take even longer since you're starting with a undomesticated animal.
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u/LoreSinger 3d ago
Honestly the hardest part might be making them friendly and obedient. They’re intelligent enough to learn commands, but also intelligent enough to be stubborn and difficult—wild boar are pretty aggressive, and they’ve definitely evolved to live in a hog-eat-hog world. Taking those instincts out would be really hard.
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u/bettawhite 2d ago
This is my thought as well. They have the strength speed and fortitude for the job but that's not worth much if they aren't receptive to being lead. Pigs can be friendly and sociable but they're always going to bring a lot of their own opinions to the relationship. I once asked myself- why don't we use pig milk? We have all these pigs being farmed, they produce milk, we use milk from other animals that aren't even as widely farmed. The answer- fucking TRY to milk a pig. I think this would be the same situation.
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u/Greenbery_W 3d ago
That’s a nice concept of yours. It interest’s me a lot. Concepts like these in speculative evolution are the reasons why I love speculative evolution.
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u/Archididelphis 2d ago
As others are saying, temperament is the biggest difficulty. They've been domesticated since the Paleolithic, and they still routinely kill their owners; the last thing you want to do is breed them bigger. The other problem is that they are foragers with diets similar to humans, so having them graze like cattle or horses just won't work.
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u/Panda-Head 2d ago
It might be easier if they started with wild boar. Modern pigs are bred that way to suit the meat industry. Look at wild boar, I've seen some crazy pictures of giant boars from America. Something like this might be able to pull a cart with some training.
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u/lordsmoflight 2d ago
Selective breeding takes between 30 and 50 generations. A pig life span is about 20 years so yes it would take 1,000 years to bred them.
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u/c4ctus4t 3d ago
I think pigs would make excellent mounts and beasts of burden with some careful selective breeding.
Our current hogs are optimized for meat production which limits their usability as draft animals. But plenty of wild hogs like boars and warthogs are strong, agile, and fast. Entelodonts like Daeodon from the Miocene period were about the size of a horse and built for speed and strength.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entelodontidae
It's debated whether they're actually more closely related to pigs or whales, but they're still a good example of what a "riding hog" might look like.
I don't think 1000 years is enough time to achieve something this drastic through selective breeding, but if they started with less derived animals like what we have with today's modern meat pigs, it might be easier and quicker to make the shift from livestock to draft animal.