Hogzilla the carcass did not quite measure up to Hogzilla the legend, made famous by a single, frequently e-mailed photograph, according to a documentary shown on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday night.
But to fans of the supposedly 3.66m-long, 454kg wild hog, shot on a South Georgia farm near the town of Alapaha last June, the important thing was that Hogzilla did exist.
They did not mind that a team of scientists who exhumed the carcass estimated that the pig was only about 2.44m-long and 363.2kg. "I was not at all disappointed," said Darlene Turner of Jernigan's Trustworthy Hardware in Alapaha, which does a brisk business in Hogzilla T-shirts. "I actually thought it was about nine foot [2.74m]."
Last week, Ken Holyoak, on whose fish farm the hog was shot by an employee, Chris Griffin, had already laid the groundwork for a rebuttal to the show, saying that the hog would have shrunk after being buried for six months.
The scientists -- allowing for shrinkage -- measured the hog, analyzed its shape and even tested its DNA before concluding that it was a mix of wild boar and a domestic breed. Its tusks, measuring nearly 83.82cm together, set a North American Safari Club International record.
The biggest wild boars and feral pigs are generally about 227kg. Pen-raised hogs can exceed 454kg. John Mayer, an expert on wild pigs and one of the scientists in the documentary, said in an interview that he believed Hogzilla had to have been pen-raised.
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