Rearing Wild Boar in Okinawa: Thinking About Their Domestication

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand the practices for the rearingRearing of wild boarsWild boar on the Ryukyu Islands. In the present study, the rearingRearing of wild boars began with the live capture of wild boarWild boar piglets, which accounted for over 50% of cases surveyed. Most of these cases are surmised to have occurred fortuitously as a result of human–wild boar interaction. The environment of forests inhabited by wild boarWild boar in close proximity to human villages facilitated encounters, capture, and feeding. Systematic rearingRearing was observed: this involved habituating wild boars to human environments through feeding and luring male wild boarsWild boar and breeding them with female boars being reared. To breed successive generations of wild boarsWild boar, some breeders adopted long-term modern methods similar to those used in the rearingRearing of pigs. Techniques derived by trial and error for rearingRearing wild boar were gradually improved, and this led to the enhanced human management of wild boarWild boar propagation. I surmise that wild boars were domesticated relatively quickly compared with other animals because boars adapt well to a commensal environment modified by humans.