Abstract
The aim of this study was to understand the practices for the rearing of wild boars on the Ryukyu Islands. In the present study, the rearing of wild boars began with the live capture of wild boar piglets, which accounted for over 50% of cases surveyed. Most of these cases are surmised to have occurred fortuitously as a result of human–wild boar interaction. The environment of forests inhabited by wild boar in close proximity to human villages facilitated encounters, capture, and feeding. Systematic rearing was observed: this involved habituating wild boars to human environments through feeding and luring male wild boars and breeding them with female boars being reared. To breed successive generations of wild boars, some breeders adopted long-term modern methods similar to those used in the rearing of pigs. Techniques derived by trial and error for rearing wild boar were gradually improved, and this led to the enhanced human management of wild boar propagation. I surmise that wild boars were domesticated relatively quickly compared with other animals because boars adapt well to a commensal environment modified by humans.
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Acknowledgements
A part of this study was conducted with a fellowship grant from the Institute for Animal Science. I express my warmest appreciation for their funding.
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Kurosawa, Y. (2023). Rearing Wild Boar in Okinawa: Thinking About Their Domestication. In: Ikeya, K., Balée, W. (eds) Global Ecology in Historical Perspective. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_6
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