The wild ancestors of pigs.
In distant prehistoric times, pigs were quite ferocious creatures.
At that time, wild boar meat was a very important part of people's food source in life, and there are even many ancient documents that have the evaluation of "the first beast of prey, the second pig is the second, and the bird of prey is third".
Many ancient emperors and ministers chose to hunt wild boars when hunting, because they were far more fierce than lions and tigers.
And why are wild boars so fierce?
In fact, the reason for this can be found in the habits and evolutionary history of wild boars.
Wild boar is an omnivore, wild boar has a very strong chewing ability in the mouth, so there are many branches, seeds, wood chips and other hard plants in the wild boar's food range, the food that wild boar eats is because the teeth are extremely sharp, so it can easily chew and swallow food.
In addition, wild boars will sniff out some small animals from time to time and prey on some small animals.
However, the ferocious wild boars are not because of their strong chewing power and hunting ability, but because the environment in which the wild boar lives is too harsh.
Wild boars generally live under the bushes in the barred grasslands and labyrinthine forests.
The environment of this place is very cramped, far from suitable for the life of giant animals such as wild boars, but there are poisonous snakes and poisonous insects in this place all year round.
Wild boars become very fierce in order to adapt to such an environment.
The shape of the wild boar is no different from that of other pigs, but the shoulder muscles and jaw muscles of the wild boar have reached a state of near inflammation.
They live in very dangerous places all year round and have a great time moving through the vegetation, so they tend to hunt animals that are not good at moving quickly.
When a wild boar is hunting, it only needs to run directly over to injure the prey.
Therefore, in ancient literature, the wild boar is evaluated as the "head of the beast" for this reason.
However, the ferocious wild boar is actually an animal that eats soft and does not bite hard.
When hunted by humans, people often find that many wild boars have been hunted, because wild boars prey on poisonous snakes, but they do not know how to distinguish poisonous snakes, so they are vulnerable to poisonous snake bites when hunting.
The body of wild boars is often full of various highly toxic toxins.
There are many records in many historical books that when ancient hunters hunted wild boars, they would often be injured by the venom in the internal organs of wild boars because of the method of killing wild boars.
At the same time, in ancient times, many people would be poisoned and died by eating wild boars by mistake, so in ancient times, people would only be very careful when eating the meat of wild boars, and try their best to prevent eating the venom and highly toxic plant seeds in the body of wild boars.
Why is the evolutionary direction of beauty?
So why did pigs evolve from more ferocious to relatively docile?
This should be analyzed from the ecological environment of wild boars.
Wild boars have a very wide range of activities, they live in large forests, and it is not easy to find them.
However, even so, the wild boar population has always been very large.
However, with the continuous progress of human society, the original vast forest and green space have been gradually cut down, and the scope of many human activities has been expanded.
Wild boars, which are large and easy to hunt, have become a target for human hunting.
However, in the process of evolution, in order to adapt to the small living space, wild boars broke the law of "soft but not hard".
Wild boars have gradually reduced their size over the course of evolution, making it more difficult to hunt.
Wild boars living in small environments have no way to escape, so the threat to foreign enemies has become great.
While humans are constantly hunting, wild boars themselves have no way to survive.
Therefore, in order for the population to eventually survive, some wild boars have chosen to grow larger when they evolve.
This reduces the threat of hunting and makes it easier for humans to grab food.
On the other hand, in order to reduce the size of the wild boar, but also continue to evolve the community, the development of an extremely strict social structure, and at the same time, in order to adapt to the small environment, the wild boar has improved its hunting skills outstandingly, so that its hunting skills can be adapted to the hunting of small animals in an instant, but this is the best way for wild boars to survive.
Therefore, through continuous evolution, wild boars have gradually made their offspring smaller in size, so that the offspring can more easily adapt to the small environment, and at the same time, they will also adapt to the hunting ability of small animals.
Human intervention.
Wild boars live in vast forests, and humans often have to go through a lot of twists and turns when hunting.
At that time, bows and arrows were still in their primitive stage and had a limited range, so wild boars were often able to avoid the attack of hunting arrows when they fled.
After the advent of hounds, humans hunted faster than they could be, forcing wild boars out of the herd almost once.
In ancient times, when people hunted wild boars, the target of the hunt was often the most ferocious wild boar in the group.
Therefore, there were already a lot of wild boars that had been hunted at that time, so it can be seen that it is impossible for wild boars to evolve from evolving into non-hunting animals in a short period of time.
As for the evolutionary method of being used as food.
Many people will wonder why pigs are domesticated by humans, but wild boars can produce and reproduce, so why do humans domesticate pigs?
As we all know, the meat of snakes is extremely harmful to the human body in the case of pollution, so in ancient Chinese medicine, it was found that the meat of snakes is very helpful to the internal organs of the human body and can nourish the body.
Wild boars lived in a toxic environment all year round in ancient times, so in ancient times, many doctors often used wild boar meat to detoxify, which was of great benefit to patients.
On the other hand, in ancient times, gym equipment was not a common way for people to exercise.
When people do physical exercise, they often choose soft items to exercise the muscles of the arms and other parts.
Wild boars have very large and tough muscles, which is very beneficial for fitness.
Similarly, wild boars could also be used to process their muscles into gym equipment, so they were domesticated at that time.