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puppy_fair"Hey again, guys," Zack said, smiling as he settled in at the front of the classroom today. "We've got some interesting ones for you today. Apparently someone had a litter of pigs they just couldn't keep, which kind of begs the question of who keeps a fertile breeding pair of anything if they don't want babies in their home, but..."
Zack shrugged. Life running the shelter was apparently making him think about these sorts of things now.
"In any case, today we're going to talk about the Lon I, more locally known as the Vietnamese pot-bellied pig." The little piglets zoomed around in the playpen, and Zack smiled at them. They were kind of cute when they were little like that. "They're traditionally reared for meat, but... less, these days, as a faster-growing pig with a larger meat yield started to take its place. Which, in the case of domesticated animals that are mainly reared for food, is..." He grimaced a little. "It's not great. Their continued survival as a breed depends on a farmer's continued interest in raising them, and keeping genetic stocks diverse is hard to do as fewer people continue to raise them. Farmers are running businesses, after all, and an animal with a slow yield can't keep up in a market where other stock is being selectively bred to be bigger, meatier, faster-growing. Where there were hundreds of thousands of these guys about twenty years ago, they're endangered, now."
Little tiny piggies trotted around in the pen. Just focus on the cute, guys.
"A few were marketed here in America and up in Canada as pets, but that fad didn't last long. A purebred I pig only gets about half a meter tall. But other pig stock, which most 'pet' breeds were interbred with, tends to get considerably larger. You probably don't want it living in your house." He nodded toward the piglets in the pen. "These ones are purebred, mostly a quirk of the multiverse, but the shelter will be sending them to a zoo on the mainland to help increase genetic diversity in their stocks here. In the meantime, you might as well play with them."
A pause.
"Just be aware that they're kind of quick and wiggly if you take them out of the pen. I mean, you're welcome to, but," he gave an amused little smile, "you have to catch them again if you do."
[OOC: Open!]
Zack shrugged. Life running the shelter was apparently making him think about these sorts of things now.
"In any case, today we're going to talk about the Lon I, more locally known as the Vietnamese pot-bellied pig." The little piglets zoomed around in the playpen, and Zack smiled at them. They were kind of cute when they were little like that. "They're traditionally reared for meat, but... less, these days, as a faster-growing pig with a larger meat yield started to take its place. Which, in the case of domesticated animals that are mainly reared for food, is..." He grimaced a little. "It's not great. Their continued survival as a breed depends on a farmer's continued interest in raising them, and keeping genetic stocks diverse is hard to do as fewer people continue to raise them. Farmers are running businesses, after all, and an animal with a slow yield can't keep up in a market where other stock is being selectively bred to be bigger, meatier, faster-growing. Where there were hundreds of thousands of these guys about twenty years ago, they're endangered, now."
Little tiny piggies trotted around in the pen. Just focus on the cute, guys.
"A few were marketed here in America and up in Canada as pets, but that fad didn't last long. A purebred I pig only gets about half a meter tall. But other pig stock, which most 'pet' breeds were interbred with, tends to get considerably larger. You probably don't want it living in your house." He nodded toward the piglets in the pen. "These ones are purebred, mostly a quirk of the multiverse, but the shelter will be sending them to a zoo on the mainland to help increase genetic diversity in their stocks here. In the meantime, you might as well play with them."
A pause.
"Just be aware that they're kind of quick and wiggly if you take them out of the pen. I mean, you're welcome to, but," he gave an amused little smile, "you have to catch them again if you do."
[OOC: Open!]