Pigs and Humans

Pigs are the most misunderstood animal all over the world! The reason is that even though people use pigs in several ways for example food, medical treatment, or companion animals, generally, “pig” is used as an insult. For instance, “you look like a pig” for a fat person. Another example is that Muslims regard the pig as an unclean animal. Frankly speaking, people are reluctant to compare humans and pigs; definitely, both of them differ in appearance. However, humans and pigs have some surprising similarities between internal organ, placenta, cleanness, and lovingness.

First of all, in the medical field, the resemblance is well known between humans’ and pigs’ internal organs. Internal organs of humans and pigs are alike not only in size, but also in physiology. If a pig’s insulin transferred to a human's body, he/she would not show rejection because the pig’s and the human's insulin are almost the same physically. Recently, the development of treatments for diabetes using pigs has been taking place among advanced nations. The sole medicine for diabetes is insulin; the insulin is made from a pig’s pancreas. In Washington University in 2004, an experiment took place for trying to find a cure for diabetes. The researchers took islets of Lanferhans, which are organs that secret insulin into the pig, and they transferred the islets of Lanferhans to a human’s body. Nowadays, people in the medical field have been trying to succeed in a new treatment called human islets transplantation. Furthermore, they have also been experimenting, not only with islets of Lanferhans, but also with livers and hearts for transplantation. Since 1950’s, the research about “specific pathogen free” has progressed to produce lots of pigs that are useful for humans’ medical treatments. Specific pathogen free is a term used for laboratory animals that are guaranteed free of particular pathogen. Because pigs’ and humans’ organs are similar, people has been trying to produce SPF.

In addition to the anatomical similarities between them, the placentas in both of humans and pigs are unexpectedly alike. The placenta includes amino acids, nucleic acids, vitamins, and minerals; as you can see, it is extremely nutritious. Because pig’s placentas are compatible with human’s, the extract from pig’s placenta is refined and used to make people strong, beautiful, and live longer. Furthermore, the placenta gives energy to weak cells in the body; therefore, it is instrumental in maintaining a healthy body condition, and is effective in allergy treatment. Even if people use the pig’s placenta, they can get a same effect that when they use humans’ placenta.

Most significantly, the pig is just as clean as humans are. People and pigs are both sleep and expel waste in different areas. In the case of pigs, it is consummately the same. As I mentioned before, some religious people hate pigs, seeing them as a dirty animal. However, they have misunderstood pigs. Pigs are much cleaner than other animals. For example, they decide where the bath room is, so they always expel waste in same place. Pigs never dirty their bed space. They usually soak in the mud, not to become dirty, but to cool their body because they do not have sweat gland. When I used to go to high school for agriculture, I took care of three pigs in each barn. They and their room were clean; they separated bedroom, feeder, and bathroom respectively. Pigs’ stalls were the easiest rooms of all barn animals’ to take care of.

One more similarity is that a pig is no less loving than a human. For example, pig babies head toward their mother for comfort; the mother brings up her babies with her singing. There is another case to show lovingness. People sometimes display miraculous ability for someone, especially their family or friends like rescuing them from danger; likewise, pigs show their courage for someone, especially their master in the same way. The example is that one pig, named Plue, saved his master from a pond. The news was reported in The Daily Telegraph, an English newspaper, and the pig was admired by many. They are friendly, loyal, loving; besides, it is probable that they might have strong emotions just as humans.

Despite humans and pigs having various similarities, some people do not want to agree with these. It happens because of people’s misunderstanding or misconception. However, positively speaking, the pig is a wonderful animal and is very human like.