Mutant ‘super pig’ population spirals out of control in nuclear fallout zone

A mutant super pig population has spiraled out of control — thanks to their inherited, rapid reproductive cycles — in the ghost towns of a nuclear fallout zone in Japan, according to reports and researchers.

The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, spurred by a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami, forced roughly 164,000 people to flee from their homes to escape the radiation zone.

Amid the chaos, domestic pigs escaped into abandoned farmland and began interbreeding with indigenous feral boars — creating a mutant pig population with alarming genes, Popular Science reported.

Researchers from Fukushima and Hirosaki Universities discovered through DNA analysis that the hybrid progeny inherited the maternal domestic pig’s rapid reproductive cycle, allowing populations to quickly multiply, unlike that of the boar, according to findings from the Journal of Forest Research.

“While it has been previously suggested that hybridization between rewilded swine and wild boars can contribute to population growth, this study demonstrates — through the analysis of a large-scale hybridization event following the Fukushima nuclear accident — that the rapid reproductive cycle of domestic swine is inherited through the maternal lineage,”  Professor Shingo Kaneko of Fukushima University said in a statement.

Wild boars typically reproduce once a year, but domestic pigs reproduce in speedy, year-round cycles, creating a faster generational turnover of the mutant pig species.

The hybrid species carrying pig maternal lineages also exhibited far lower levels of domestic pig DNA than expected, suggesting the population boom is diluting pig nuclear genes.

“We wish to emphasize that this mechanism likely occurs in other regions worldwide where feral pigs and wild boars interbreed,” Hirosaki University geneticist Donovan Anderson added in a statement.

Feral swine are one of the world’s most destructive invasive species, decimating crops, livestock, and delicate ecosystems. Efforts to repair their damage cost an estimated $3.4 billion in the US alone, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

In the abandoned environment of Fukushima, wild boar populations rapidly boomed without human intervention. This, coupled with the accelerated breeding of the hybrid species, created an unprecedented genetic turnover, researchers added.

The findings could be an important tool for conservation and wildlife management of the notoriously invasive animals.

“By understanding that maternal swine lineages accelerate generation turnover, authorities can better predict population explosion risks,” Kaneko said.