Are pigs carnivores ?

Someone asked me if pigs will eat dead pigs and I rattled off a quick answer "yeah they'll eat anything , the opportunist feeders".

Then I got to thinking, I've never read or seen any videos to prove or disprove the statement.

Now I ask you guys - will they eat dead animals (hogs , fish , deer , coons) ?

Do you have link to read or watch this behavior ?

They eat grubs so that make them carnivores

On my place they will not touch meat

I ve seen videos of them eating mice

Someone posted a video on here sometime back of pigs eating on a dead deer.

I've seen pigs eating a road-killed hog. A buddy of mine fed the scraps of a couple does we shot last season to their sows.

So yes.

I believe I would call them omnivores since they'll eat just about everything.

when I was around 10 or so I remember heading out to feed some hogs we had caught the month before. one of them was a young sow who had several piglets the day after we put her in the pen. as I got closer to the pens I could see her carrying something around in her mouth. turned out to be one of her piglets. she had already eaten two and was working on the third when I walked up.

that left an impression.

They will eat anything including dead pigs. My neighbor traps them, kills them. He left 2 hogs on the fence line. When my buddy was walking to his stand before dawn, he jumped 3 pigs feeding on them at the fence line. Startled him so bad I don't think he had a chance to even get his rifle shouldered.

Thanks all for the stories and photo/video.

Keep'em coming

I was in my cozy box blind in misty/rainy weather on a moon lit night.
A group of smaller pigs wondered into the feeder area and I waited to see if there were some bigger ones following.
I watched for 10-15 minutes and decided they were probably alone so I shot the biggest one which was only 40-50 pounds and he dropped right by the feeder.
It started raining harder and lasted about 20 minutes so I just sat tight in the box blind.
It lightened up a little and as I was scanning the area, some sows came in.
One that was about 150 pounds walked over and sniffed the dead pig on the ground.
As another sow walked toward them, the first one grabbed the dead one and started eating it.
She had ate about half of it before I could pull the rifle up record thru the NV.
Dammit! I bumped the stand and they scattered.
I just caught the tail end of the sow trotting off with the rest of the dead one in her mouth.

That picture isn't North American hogs. I wish I had a place with hogs like that. They look pretty awesome.

Oh yeah they eat meat. Not everywhere though. I think they just eat it when there's not a lot to choose from.

When I was younger we found some mice under a tarp, my dad picked up the little pink mice and through them in the pens with the hogs they gobbled those suckers up...

It's easier to make a list of what a hog won't eat than it is to make a list of what they will eat.

I think if it has a calorie, and a pig can get its lips around it, it's gone.

As already mentioned Hogs are 'omnivores', meaning they will eat both plant matter and flesh/meat.

You were correct to point out that they are 'opportunistic' feeders, taking advantage of whatever palatable food matter is available. Of course, that doesn't mean they don't have preferences.

Most hogs under most habitat conditions consume MUCH more plant/fruit matter (grasses, roots, tubers, grains, mast crops, persimmons, etc) than they do meat, but that is probably a matter of availability.

Hogs will definitely kill and eat whatever they can easily obtain and will also feed on carrion (carcasses).

We had a group pretty much clean up the carcass of a dead Donkey on our property. The Coyotes and Buzzards would not touch it for some reason. The hogs were happy to find it.

Just recently....I had large group of squirrels spinning the corn out of a feeder. I was forced to thin their numbers at bit and shot 9 of them one afternoon. I put the carcasses in front of one of my game cams expecting to get some video of fox and coyotes carting them off.

Instead....a large Boar showed up and ate 8 of the 9 right there in front of the camera. He walked right over corn on the ground to go straight to the Squirrels. He held each one of them down with a front hoof then ripped the carcass in two, eating each half whole. I mean tails and all. Like eating a salad. I have video of that, just don't know how to upload to YouTube then to here? I killed that boar the next evening when he came back.

Hogs are known to kill and consume Fawn Deer and Calves on occasion, but I suspect more are found already dead and then eaten.

But yes, they will eat whatever is the most expedient thing for them....under the circumstances.

I actually seen on a hunting show where they said there is a herd of White tail deer up in Michigan that swim to some island and eat these dead fish after they spawn. They said its much higher in protein than anything else they can eat in the area.

I was on a Texas Youth hunt 2 years ago and a young lady's nice 7pt buck was eaten to the front shoulders in about 3 hours by a couple of hogs by the time we found it. We heard the hogs but couldn't located 'em via the thick brush. I guess that's why they call it eating like a pig.

Charlie

Yes.

Yup.....

Even humans. Horrible story several years ago from Jack County. Elderly fellow. No way to know if he had a heart attack or went down in the hog pen while feeding or if they knocked him down. The results were gory. I've been gone from there too many years. Seem to remember he was a retired County Commissioner or Retired Sheriff.

yep,

I've heard stories where they even carried off small children back in the 1800's.

a google search found this as well.

http://www.infowars.com/rancher-wild-hogs-eat-remains-of-dead-illegals/

Posted for flintknapper

Squirrels laid out in front of game cam

I

Video of boar eating squirrels


Dead piggy

Thanks for posting those items to go along with FK's post.

Makes me wonder if hogs are like dogs in the sense that once they taste blood they then are inclined to attack or seek out that animal.

The rumor is once a dog bites or kills that it will be inclined to develop a taste for that and won't be able to resist.

I'm sure a few dogs have been put down for this reason so there has to be some credence to it.

Point being - you think a hog will seek out deer , coons, squirrels after their first survival meal???

At a prior lease, we had a designated area to dump guts and carcasses.

Between vultures, Caracaras, and the pigs, the remains would be cleaned up and spotless within a few hours.

Dropping the remains at night excluded the birds, and the pigs alone would clean the place up within hours including eating the hides with the fur on including eating some whole pig carcasses, so they are cannibalistic as well.

They sure do eat meat. Have seen them munching on an armadillo carcass. Not much they wont eat.

Hogs that like blood will keep looking for it. Seen that many times on the farm.
I have an uncle that had a car accident in the early 70s. He was ejected from a car into a feedlot of hogs. Was impaled upon a metal fencepost and trapped there. The farmer heard the accident and came to investigate. Got the hogs off of my uncle before they could kill him, but not before they started eating him.

When I was a kid my aunt and uncle were poultry farmers in Arkansas, every morning we would walk through the houses and pick up dead chicks. Usually about 2- 5 gallon buckets.

Then we would dump them in the hog pens. They would be GONE IN 60 SECONDS.......yep they are meat eaters.

They will eat whatever is in front of them.

Pretty sure a pig will eat whatever it pleases. I've seen them eat on other dead pigs.

Saw this today - adding to your many stories shared of the same, Thx.

Oh yeah, theyll eat anything and i think they like meat. I had a wild pig in a pen and always heard they eat anything. So killed to jackrabbits and threw them in the pen fur, bones, and all. That big devoured em like nothing and seemed to enjoy them (purely speculative on the pig liking rabbit?

We had some kids in the neighborhood who had caught a wild hog and they fed it anything and everything from meat to sweet. That hog would eat a big road-killed jackrabbit, walk off and burp and come back for a couple of more and never even slow down. You have heard the old saying that so and so went to _ _ _ _ and the hogs ate him. I think that statement would be literal and figurative. Don't get in the pen with a big mean one. You will end up as table fare.

Used to shoot hogs over gut piles regularly. I would call them omnivores, like you and me, they eat meat and vegies.

That makes them omnivores.

Pigs are omnivores. They will eat anything.
Usually we shoot pigs off dead pigs and gut piles.
I have always heard that a pig won't eat a raw onion though. If that is true then they truly are one of the smartest animals there is!

I call them "anyvores." Plants, check. Animals, check. And they will plumb tear up a mineral block. Not many mammals hit for the trifecta.

The TV Show, Meat Eater, showed a hog eating the intestines of a dead longhorn. Devine Texas

so HELL YES !!!

They didn't find this guy quick enough. Hogs will finish off a deer fast.

+1