“Harvesting Hogzillas: Feral Pigs and the Engineering Ideal”
Nature Remade: Engineering Life, Envisioning Worlds, edited by Luis Campos, Michael Dietrich, Tiago Saraiva, and Chris Young (University of Chicago Press, 2021)
Abstract – Feral pigs have attained mythical status in the American South. This chapter looks at their long history in the region, including their arrival during the Spanish era and their subsequent proliferation during the colonial and antebellum eras. The fate of the South’s feral pigs were thrown in limbo when the open range collapsed during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, but recreational hunting, invasion biology, and social media have conspired to ensure that they are more numerous and more widespread than ever before.