[hangonhn]

> A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them.

This makes me really curious because that behavior seems very maladaptive for a species. That leads me to wonder if something else, ie. the environment or domestication, is leading to this behavior rather than pigs being really, really prone to wiping out their own species. Does anyone know why they do this in a farm environment?

[shakna]

Pigs are adapted to singular survival. A stressed sow will often eat the piglets. And that stress can be being a mother for the first time.

There are a lot of environmental factors, like snuggling for warmth being unsafe.

But by and large... Pigs give birth in numbers. They can afford for half to die, and still proliferate. They don't need to be 'good parents'.

[AngryData]

Pigs breed like rabbits so their evolutionary path hasn't been to ensure individuals survive at the highest possible rate, their path was to have a dozen babies at a time so that even if 80% of them get killed or eaten, their population still grows and thrives. For a farmer losing 20% of their pigs because the mother sat on babies and suffocated them is a massive loss of money, for a wild pig it doesn't matter as much because 3x more will get eaten by predators and there is already another dozen on the way within a week or two of giving birth to the first litter.

Some of the loss likely is due to keeping them penned up, however there are also losses for not keeping them penned up and letting baby pigs run among a herd of many adult pigs, some of which will attempt to kill piglets, especially females who have not had piglets yet. Pigs can be absolute viscous as hell and will readily eat other living animals if they think they can get away with it, including other pigs, and some mother pigs have been known to cannibalize their young even under ideal situations. Pig farmers have themselves been killed by pigs from passing out or getting knocked out in pig pens and the pigs seeing them as a free meal not to be wasted.

[Ancapistani]

They definitely do it in the wild as well, though likely at lower rates.

They reproduce very quickly - evolution is a numbers game, and yield isn’t part of the equation.

[barbazoo]

We're also genetically engineered them to be much heavier than they would be naturally.

[Ancapistani]

That depends on the breed, but sure. I’ve not seen it happen at noticeably lower rates for less sturdy breeds for whatever it’s worth.

[jonah]

Both things you mentioned.