Explainer-in-brief: The pigheadedness of keeping a pet micro-pig
Remember micro pigs? In 2009 The Guardian ran a non-ironic article titled “which miniature animals make good pets” and earnestly advised purchasing not one pygmy goat, but two (lest the first feel lonely – duh). George Clooney and Victoria Beckham flaunted their £700 hogs. Paris Hilton kept hers in a handbag.
The craze for mini animals (largely pigs, but also goats, foxes and seahorses) is being revived by Tiktok and Youtube where influencers swan around with mini piglets, pygmy goats, tiny horses and more. Miniature animals are “smaller, more practical, take up less space and eat less” reads a starry-eyed recent headline in French newspaper Le Monde, suggesting keeping small pets counts as contributing to net zero ambitions.
Alison Fontan is one such ‘goatfluencer’ selling mini goats on her website – though “my goats are not pain au chocolat,” she notes, insightfully. In Japan, micro pig cafes are ten a penny. They advertise cuddles with micro pigs over a cappuccino.
Where did these pygmy creatures come from? Well, not Noah’s Ark, that’s for sure. They were first developed in the 1940s for medical research. And, arguably, the lab is where they should have stayed. Ninety per cent of micro pigs get abandoned, according to the Life with Pigs Farm Animal Sanctuary. That’s a lot of excess hog hurt, if not a terrible waste of life.
The government tracks micro pigs. It advises that anyone who owns one is a pig keeper and must register in order to obtain a ‘pig walking licence‘, possibly outlining the proposed walking route. Yet this hasn’t put people off. Psychologically speaking, making things mini makes sense. Humans are genetically primed to think babies (typically small) are cute. We have minituarised things from portraits to houses for centuries; an equally large part of the drive to downsize everything in our sight is to exert control.
So do people ditch these ultra-cute pets? Well, partly due to the dishonesty of pig dealers. A lot of the mini critter you may have your eye on are not quite what they seem. “Unscrupulous people tend to breed the runts of the litter to try to decrease the size of the pig,” warns Kevin Kersley, a breeder of small, but not micro-sized, pigs. That’s left a lot of pet owners with a full grown hog and not a lot they can do about it – except ditch it. Or, for the more committed, ferry it around in a taxi (read: a Scot who bought a pig advertised as “micro” now drives him around in a hackney cab after he grew to 125kgs). They can also live for up to 25 years.
Animal welfare advocates, unsurprisingly, are alarmed. Pigs are social creatures, so should ideally live as a herd. The corner of your sitting room, however well decorated, is not their ideal hang out spot. The sanctuary Pig Inn Heaven has launched a petition to call for a ban on breeding.