Same Lanyu, different pigs
Back in 1897, two years after the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, anthropologist Ryuzo Torii became the first Japanese person to land on Lanyu (called Koto-sho at the time). He heard the local tribesmen using the word "yami" to address each other in their native tongue; this is the source of the tribe name Yami.
After a survey around the island lasting over two weeks, Torii and the Japanese soldiers who accompanied him noted down records about the Yami (also known as the Tao): "Socioeconomically, they live a primitive communal lifestyle based on barter, raising goats and chickens, and small wild pigs. Their crops include sweet potatoes, millet grown in dry fields, and taro and fruit grown in wet fields, with fish as their main staple." This was the first time the Lanyu miniature pig was described in writing.
But the Lanyu miniature pig enjoyed high status in Yami oral tradition for a much longer time. According to an oft-recited tale, a child once saw a small black animal on a path, suckling from its mother and crying out "ee-kikik." The child, puzzled, asked his grandfather what it was. "Go catch one, bring it back, and show it to me," said the grandfather. "Ah!" he said when he saw the child holding the little creature, "That is a kois.'' This is the origin of the Tao word for "pig."
DNA paternity testing technology didn't appear until the 1980s, so these written records and oral legends can't prove the numbers or genetic purity of early Lanyu miniature pigs. However, they fit roughly with the traits of the Lanyu miniature pig. How do we know this? In 1975, Lee Tang-yuang and Sung Yung-yi, professors of animal husbandry at National Taiwan University, searched Taiwan high and low to develop a commercialized breed of miniature pig, at last finding what they were looking for on the island of Lanyu. They then took one male and four female purebred Lanyu miniature pigs back to Taiwan and crossed them with white foreign landrace pigs, and successfully bred the small, black-haired and white-spotted Lee-Sung pig.
Since 1996, the Lanyu miniature pig and the Lee-Sung pig have been the only two miniature pig breeds from Taiwan to be registered by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. And of these, the Lanyu miniature pig is the only pure local Taiwanese pig. But now what?
"Unfortunately there are no more pure-bred black small-eared pigs on Lanyu," remarks Hsieh Han-chung, an employee of the Lanyu Township Administration's Agriculture Section, on the current state of these pigs.
The 2005 Agricultural, Forestry, Fishery and Husbandry Census released by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics shows that none of the 445 households of Lanyu are engaged in animal husbandry. But in reality, per Hsieh's assessment, around 300 households maintain simple pig sheds, where the locals feed kitchen scraps to what they call "Lanyu black pigs," a hybrid of the Lanyu miniature pig, currently numbering around 1,500 island-wide.
How do these pigs differ in appearance from pure Lanyu miniature pigs? Chu Hsien-pin, chairperson of the Department of Livestock Technology at the Taitung Animal Propagation Station, remarks that though over 80% of the pigs seen wandering Lanyu's streets are black; they have, to varying degrees, broad ears, large snouts, white tails, hair color varying from black to red, and rings of white hair growing on their necks. They have already lost the heritable traits of the black small-eared pig.
Who changed the fate of these pigs? Over 80% of the population of Lanyu are Yami people, and it's generally accepted that their living conventions affect their principal means of economic activity and determine the way they raise livestock.
"No matter how many pigs or goats the Yami own, they rarely sell or trade them for other goods, instead keeping them for slaughter at festival time," says retired Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology research fellow Yu Guang-hong. To the Yami, "the economic value of livestock is far less than their sociocultural value."
"The Lanyu islanders don't engage in commerce: the pigs are not raised for sale, but chiefly for sacrifice," says Hsieh Han-chung, a local, who sums it up thus: "The reason why hybrid pigs have gradually replaced the pure ones is a problem of the islanders' attitude toward raising pigs."
That is to say, as long as they're fit for sacrifice, the Lanyu islanders don't care about the purity of the pigs' bloodline, especially when they've been interbreeding with pigs from other parts of Taiwan over the last couple decades. Hsieh tells us that Lanyu residents used to allow Lanyu miniature pigs to run free in the streets, but nowadays, despite keeping them in sheds, they are unable to control the pigs' reproductive activities. Moreover, estrus takes place an average of once every 21 days, and "Once estrus starts, the pigs, especially the males, charge outside their fences and run around wild before returning," says Hsieh. Sadly, over time, the Lanyu miniature pig's gene pool was diluted.
"Are you looking at me? Come closer!" Piglets of breeds related to the Lanyu miniature pig display the pervading gaze of the Mona Lisa in their eyes. No matter where onlookers may stand, they can't escape the pigs' stares. Left to right: a Lanyu miniature pig, a spotty Lanyu pig, a Mitsai pig and four Langbin pigs.