That is some epic clickbait. The actual paper [1] is far less exciting. It does not talk about "terror pigs" nor "radioactive pigs". tldr; domestic pigs have been breeding with wild boar in a "wild area" devoid of humans.
> We found that there were likely successful hybridization events in the evacuation zone ... we speculate two hypotheses ... (i) an abundant wild boar population caused increasing introgression of wild boar genes into the invasive pigs and a decreasing introgression of invasive genes into the wild boar with the increase in the distance from the invasion source. (ii) The pig legacy passed on to the next-generation hybrids was dependent on the ability of pigs to naturalize in the wild area of Japan.
We still have "radiactive chernobyl pigs" running around the woods here in Sweden. Meaning that in some areas that got hit by the cloud that blew in over northern europe, wild boar dig around and down to 1986 soil levels and over time accumulate caesium or whatever it is.
> These hybrids now comprise up to 10 per cent of the local population, evidently combining the wild-smarts of their boar ancestors with an enjoyment of the finer things which human civilisation can bring, inherited from their domesticated forebears.
> The future of the Fukushima terror pigs is hard to predict. If they had the intelligence to team up and combine into one unstoppable force, an indestructible boar army of that nature would surely be able to overrun the rest of the Japanese archipelago and, The Reg fears, possibly the whole world.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 23.1 ms ] threadBut out of context and seen in a news aggregator, it indeed looks really funny.
This movie better be directed by Robert Rodriguez when this ends up going straight to Shudder for release
> We found that there were likely successful hybridization events in the evacuation zone ... we speculate two hypotheses ... (i) an abundant wild boar population caused increasing introgression of wild boar genes into the invasive pigs and a decreasing introgression of invasive genes into the wild boar with the increase in the distance from the invasion source. (ii) The pig legacy passed on to the next-generation hybrids was dependent on the ability of pigs to naturalize in the wild area of Japan.
h1] ttps://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.0874
Is this a April 1st joke held of the 1st of July?
> The future of the Fukushima terror pigs is hard to predict. If they had the intelligence to team up and combine into one unstoppable force, an indestructible boar army of that nature would surely be able to overrun the rest of the Japanese archipelago and, The Reg fears, possibly the whole world.
Why does this read like an Animal Farm fanfic?