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| By cdorobek (Flickr: 08.2012 Vorobek Bahamas - swimming pigs) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
Big Major Cay a/k/a "Pig Island" is an uninhabited (at least by humans) island in the Bahamas. It is, however, the home to a colony of swimming pigs. The porkers enjoy cavorting in the water and will eagerly paddle out to boats for handouts.
No one is sure how the colony started, but the first hogs there were probably either left on the island by sailors for a future source of food or were the survivors of a shipwreck.
Lamentably, the word has gotten out, and many areas in the Caribbean now feature entrepreneurs who buy some hogs, who throw the pigs into the water during the day to be photographed (for a price) with the tourists, and who then recapture any swine who have not drowned or been eaten by sharks and pen them up at night for use the next day. Further lamentably, pigs defecate even while in the water, and some tourists with skin abrasions or cuts who swam with the porkers have come home and developed very serious life and limb-threatening infections.
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