Information about pigs

Pigs (scientific name: Susscrofa domestica), mammals, Artiodactyla, pigs, omnivores. Pigs generally refer to domestic animals. Pigs have short fat limbs, gentle temperament, strong adaptability, easy feeding and rapid reproduction. Pigs can be bred 5- 12 months after birth, and the gestation period is about 4 months. The average life span of pigs is 20 years.

About the culture of pigs

Pigs rank 12 among the traditional Chinese zodiac animals in China.

Aliases of pigs and Chinese characters

At first, the Chinese character representing pigs was the hieroglyph "tapir" (pronounced shǐ in Mandarin).

The word "pig" is a pictophonetic character made later, which comes from tapir; The simplification of Chinese characters changed the "tapir" on the left to "dog" and "pig".

The original meaning of the pictograph "Bi" refers to wild boar, and the "arrow" below and the symbols on both sides indicate that the arrow has entered the wild boar.

The word "dolphin" was added next to the meat moon on the left side of the tapir. The original meaning refers to piglets specially raised for slaughtering edible meat.

Pigs play an important role in China's family. In the word "home" from inscriptions on bronze to regular script, the lower part of Bao Gai is "tapir". According to the general view, in ancient China, there was no family without pigs. However, it has also been pointed out that in Oracle Bone Inscriptions's word "home", the image under the house clearly indicates that it is a wild boar, not an ordinary word "jackal", because a symbol representing male genitalia is clearly added under the word "jackal".

"Er Ya Shi Beast" records: "Hey, pigs too. Its son is called dolphin. One year old. " So pigs, porpoises and raccoons all refer to pigs.