Pigs and us.

[madd0ct0r]

I've never seen this argument used by a creationist but it's been bugging me recently.

Is there any good hypothesis why we and pigs are so similar?

We suffer many of the same diseases including sunburn.
Pig organs are similar enough to ours to permit transplants.
pigs milk is the closest to human of all domesticated animals.
pigs are bloody intelligent.

Now I'm not sure how many of these traits are present in wild boar but clearly we've bred traits into them for many years.

Did we (accidently) create pigs in our own image?

[Singular Intellect]

This picture should adequately explain the situation.

Of course, seriously it isn't actually that far off. Evolution is the answer one would quickly refer to, whereas it demostrates similar traits across many species. Pigs would merely be one we share an above average number of traits with.

[Kanastrous]

I like pigs. Cats look down on us. Dogs look up to us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston Churchill


I think someone around here was using that as part of their sig...

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I've never seen this argument used by a creationist but it's been bugging me recently.

Is there any good hypothesis why we and pigs are so similar?

Because we're both mammals, and our last common ancestor lived no more than some tens of millions of years ago. We share nearly all our genes with mice, as an example. The chief differences arising from the regulation and expression of these genes. We also have a similar body plan to reptiles and amphibians, from which we diverged several hundred million years before. We share a third of our genes with plants.

We suffer many of the same diseases including sunburn.

This is a function of reduced body hair and (relatively) thin hides. Hairless breeds of dogs and cats are susceptible to sunburn too. Also, quite unlike humans, pigs have no functional sweat glands.

Pig organs are similar enough to ours to permit transplants.

There is also substantial size overlap between humans and pigs. Great ape organs would be better, but harvesting organs from them introduces ethical issues that just don't exist with pigs.

pigs milk is the closest to human of all domesticated animals.

If God wanted us to drink pig's milk, he'd have given them udders. Seriously. Pigs aren't suitable for milking.

pigs are bloody intelligent.

They are large social omnivores. Large omnivorous mammals, and social carnivorous mammals are both highly intelligent. Combine the two traits, and, unsurprisingly, you end up with an animal that's brighter than the typical mammal.

Now I'm not sure how many of these traits are present in wild boar but clearly we've bred traits into them for many years.

All of them. That's what made them so desirable for domestication. And when you turn domestic pigs loose, they (more or less) go right back to being wild boars.

[Superman]

Why would this even remotely make a good argument for the creationist camp? Pigs and humans have some similarities, therefore creationism is a good theory? What the heck? It's a good thing I kind of like pigs, otherwise I might be insulted.

If creationists are pointing out similarities between species as some kind of "evidence" of their silly god, why don't ever point out that humans and chimps share 98.6% of their DNA? Oh right, that would look bad for them. Parallel evolution isn't necessarily uncommon; birds and bats both have wings, right? Should we somehow pull creationist garbage out of that?

[Superman]

Ah, I thought this was in response to a creationist argument. My bad. The point is still the same, however...

[Knife]

Since we share something akin to 50% of the DNA of fruit flies, is it that odd that pigs are really close to us? What is it? 99.8% of our DNA is the same as chimps.


Bluntly, pigs need connective, muscle, nervous and epithelial tissue. There's a shit load of realitive DNA. We're both mammals, there's even more.

Quite frankly, it takes a small amount of deviation in DNA to get another species.

[madd0ct0r]

All of this I'm well aware of and no, I'm not a creationist.

Like Grandmasterterryn points out, much of the similarities are down to both having thin (almost) hairless skins and being about the same side.

Pigs being omnivorous probably helps too.

BUT Pigs milk can be drunk by humans. It's just very hard to actually produce on a big scale

As you can see, sows produce very little milk a day
http://jas.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/77/7/1620

As for the edibility question: I've looked but my google-fu is weak. At most i've found rants against milk or 'unclean' animals.