A small sounder of Feral Hogs crossed our path near Lock and Dam Number 4 in the Trinity River Greenbelt Riverbend Preserve. There may have been as many as five pigs in this group. Most were quite young. One was large and black.
Feral Hogs do not have the best situational awareness. Their hearing and eyesight are relatively poor. We shifted positions and whispered back and forth to each other for several minutes—only a few yards/meters away from the hogs—without disturbing them.
Our view of the pigs was obstructed to some degree by the intervening foliage, but we were still able to get a few photographs of them. We even managed a little video. The clip below is interesting because at one point you can see that the hog finally becomes alerted to our presence. The pig lifts his head up and looks directly at us for several second, but he does not bolt. Instead, he lowers his head and returns to rooting in the soil. Then, as if it took a few seconds for the significance of what he saw to sink in, the pig turns and flees as if his life depended on it. Strange behavior, and funny. It made us laugh!
That delayed fear reaction is very funny, indeed. Those hogs do look young (not that I’m any hog expert, having never yet seen one).