Ossabaw Island

Ossabaw Island sits off the Georgia coast near Savannah, and the hogs on it descend from pigs that Spanish explorers either lost or turned loose from the 1500s. Those animals founded most of the historic feral swine of the American South. The Ossabaw is the population that stayed put and stayed isolated.

The received story is that they are Spanish. DNA complicates it. Mitochondrial DNA, which passes only down the female line, points instead to the Canary Islands, a standard resupply stop on the way west, and to pigs there that carried Asian influence. Iberian pig mitochondrial DNA shows only European ancestry. Paternal-line work still needs doing before anyone can say how the three populations relate.

What is not in doubt is the value of the isolation. Centuries alone on an island make the Ossabaw the closest living representative of the stock the Spanish actually landed.

Boars run 250 to 300 pounds and sows 150 to 250, though that varies by line and by how they are kept. Island stock and captive-bred stock are not the same thing, so ask which you are looking at.