Vietnamese Pot-bellied is the

exonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

for the Lon I () or I pig, an endangered traditional Vietnamese

breed A breed is a specific group of breedable domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist seve ...

of small

domestic pig The pig (''Sus domesticus''), also called swine (: swine) or hog, is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is named the domestic pig when distinguishing it from other members of the genus '' Sus''. Some authorities cons ...

. The I is uniformly black and has short legs and a low-hanging belly, from which the name derives. It is reared for meat; it is slow-growing, but the pork has good flavour. The I was depicted in the traditional Đông Hồ paintings of Bắc Ninh province as a symbol of happiness, satiety and wealth.

History

The I is a traditional Vietnamese breed. It is thought to have originated in the

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Nam Định Nam Định () is the capital city of Nam Định province in the Red River Delta of the Northern Vietnam. History From August 18–20 of each year, there is a festival held in Nam Định called the Cố Trạch. This celebration honors Gener ...

, in the

Red River Delta The Red River Delta or Hong River Delta () is the flat low-lying plain formed by the Red River and its distributaries merging with the Thái Bình River in Northern Vietnam. ''Hồng'' (紅) is a Sino-Vietnamese word for "red" or "crimson". T ...

. It was the dominant local pig breed in most provinces of the delta, and was widely distributed in Nam Định province and the neighbouring provinces of

Hà Nam Hà is a Vietnamese given name, male or female, meaning "river". Hà is a Vietnamese 'surname' (during French colonialism). The name is transliterated as He in Chinese and Ha in Korean. Ha is the anglicized variation of the surname Hà. It is ...

, Ninh Bình and

Thái Bình Thái Bình City () is a city in the Red River Delta of Northern Vietnam. It is the capital of Thái Bình Province. The city is located 110 km from Hanoi. The city area is 67.7 square km, with a population of 210,000 people (2006). Histor ...

, as well as in the province of

Thanh Hóa Thanh Hóa () is the capital of Thanh Hóa Province. The city is situated in the east of the province on the Ma River (Sông Mã), about 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of capital Hanoi and 1560 kilometers (969 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh Cit ...

immediately to the south, in the

North Central Coast Bắc Trung Bộ (literally North Central Region, and often translated as North Central Coast) is one of the geographic regions of Vietnam. It consists of six provinces in northern part of Central Vietnam: Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh, Qu� ...

region. Until the 1970s the I was probably the most numerous pig breed in northern Vietnam, with numbers running into millions. From that time, the more productive

Móng Cái Móng Cái (, /mong:gaai:si/) is a city in Quảng Ninh province in Northeast Vietnam. History Its name Móng Cái (硭街市, /mong:gaai/) originated from Cantonese language, meaning "the mong market". It generalized the situation of the popu ...

began to supplant it. The National Institute of Animal Husbandry of Vietnam started a conservation programme, with subsidies for farmers who reared

purebred Purebreds are cultivars of an animal species achieved through the process of selective breeding. When the lineage of a purebred animal is recorded, that animal is said to be pedigreed. Purebreds breed true-to-type, which means the progeny of l ...

stock, but this had little benefit – there was some increase in numbers, but at the cost of increased

inbreeding Inbreeding is the production of offspring from the mating or breeding of individuals or organisms that are closely genetic distance, related genetically. By analogy, the term is used in human reproduction, but more commonly refers to the genet ...

. In 1991, the total population of the I was estimated at , and by 2010 the estimated number was 120. In 2003 the National Institute of Animal Husbandry listed its

conservation status The conservation status of a group of organisms (for instance, a species) indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. Many factors are taken into account when assessing conservation ...

as "critical"; in 2007 the

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; . (FAO) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition ...

listed it as "endangered". Small numbers of I pigs were exported in the 1960s to Canada and Sweden, to be kept in zoos or to be used for laboratory experiments. Within a decade, the I had spread to animal parks in other countries in Europe; a few were reared on smallholdings. The I entered the United States from Canada in the mid-1980s, and by the end of the decade the "pot-bellied pig" was being marketed as a pet. Not all of these were purebred, and some grew to considerable size; the fad was short-lived. In 2013 it was declared an

invasive species An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native spec ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

Characteristics

The I is a small pig, with an average weight of approximately , and an average height of about It is uniformly black, with heavily wrinkled skin. It has a pronounced sway back and a large sagging belly, which in pregnant sows may drag on the ground. The head is small, with an up-turned

snout A snout is the protruding portion of an animal's face, consisting of its nose, mouth, and jaw. In many animals, the structure is called a muzzle, Rostrum (anatomy), rostrum, beak or proboscis. The wet furless surface around the nostrils of the n ...

, small ears and eyes, and heavy sagging jowls. The I is robust and has good resistance to disease and to parasites. It is usually raised extensively, and forages well on the rice straw and water plants of its native area. It is particularly well adapted to the marshy and muddy terrain on which it usually lives: it has

plantigrade 151px, Portion of a human skeleton, showing plantigrade habit In terrestrial animals, plantigrade locomotion means walking with the toes and metatarsals flat on the ground. It is one of three forms of locomotion adopted by terrestrial mammals. ...

feet, with weight borne on all four toes of each foot. Two principal types are recognised within the breed: the I-mo () is the typical small short-legged pig, with small upward-pointing ears and a short snout; the I-pha () is taller, has longer legs and a longer snout, with bigger ears held horizontally.

History

Characteristics

Notes

References

Further reading