hogzilla.

this morning i watched a national geographic documentary on hogzilla, pictured above. lisa ling investigated what she referred to as a "new monster roaming our swamps." the man who shot hogzilla is chris griffin, a professional hunting guide. he claimed hogzilla was 12 feet long and weighted over a ton, comparing its size to a rhino. national geographic investigators exhumed the hog's body- it was absolutely disgusting to see a 6-month old, decomposing hog carcass. examiners also had to dig up the severed head, because griffin buried it in a secret location to keep grave robbers from taking the head and having it taxidermed. anyway, this team of hog experts determined that griffin had exaggerated hogzilla's original size. it was a little sad to see this group of scientists call griffin out on his lie, especially after the georgia town declared griffin a hero, complete with an annual parade, after he'd killed the animal.

other interesting bits i learned from this documentary: the pig is the smartest of all domesticated animals. it has taken thousands of years for pigs to evolve into more gentler version we have today, but once released into the wild a pig's natural instincts can take over in a matter of weeks. once this happens its hair becomes courser, it begins to grow tusks, and becomes increasingly more aggressive. also, feral pigs can be found on every continent, living in every ecosystem, except antarctica.

apparently it is very likely that there are many other 800-1,000 pound boars roaming around the southern swamps. wild hogs have been spotted as far north as the canadian tundra. this is slightly terrifying, and frankly i blame factory farmers. after scientists genetically tested hogzilla's DNA they found that he had both wild and domesticated chromosomes, suggesting inter-breeding between wild and domesticated pigs. there can potentially be thousands of hybrid hogs living in the wild. though the pork industry in the united states is not on the same scale as china- apparently china is considered to be the world's powerhouse of pork production- we have a substantially large number of pork producers. i already blame factory pork farms for most of the e-coli outbreaks and antibiotic resistant MRSA.

most terrifying of all, now there's this- the hogzilla b-horror movie.