Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, an international team of researchers argues that Hawaii's hogs, previously thought to have arrived on the islands with English explorer James Cook in 1778, were brought there hundreds of years earlier by Polynesian settlers who would come to live there.
The scientists reached that conclusion after studying the DNA of more than four-dozen feral pigs, an analysis that told them the pigs arrived on the islands as much as 800 years earlier.
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| English explorer Captain James Cook stewarded the first European expedition to come upon the Hawaiin Islands in 1778. His mission has been credited with bringing pigs to the islands, but new research argues otherwise. |
"[Cook] almost certainly brought pigs, chickens and other animals with him," said Linderholm in a statement. "But our findings show that the wild hogs there today were introduced much earlier than his arrival, by hundreds of years at least. They likely came from European or Asian descent."
That conclusion could end up helping the hogs.
Hawaii has a sizable wild pig problem at present. The islands are overrun with thousands of up-to-400-pound feral hogs, which have been called "the most prolific large mammal on the face of the Earth" and ruin native plants as well as planted crops. Owning a home or farm in their path can be costly, and this has brought about talk of methods to get the problem under control.
However, the researchers note, pigs hold a special place in Hawaiian culture, with its Polynesian roots, and they urge caution moving forward.
Read more at Discovery News
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