What's In John's Freezer?

Sick feet, pig feet, boo hoo, in pain you are
Not well heeled; fate sealed, oh no, inflamed they are
And when your trotter’s on the floor
You’re nearly a good boar
Almost a porker

(corrupted from Pink Floyd’s “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” track #3 from the Animals concept album (1977). A song with quite a history- check out some more about it.)

It could happen…

Concept albums often weave back and forth between themes in a non-linear story, returning to refrains and leitmotifs to create their narrative weft and warp. This Freezermas, I’ve already woven in two legs and four legs, cats and other beasts, x-rays and more. Today, I tie in another thread, which extends throughout the blog, but especially into yesterday’s post. This post is about feet and health again. But it is also solely about pigs, which are cool animals whose biomechanics are surprisingly little studied.

It’s a shorter post (in contrast to the 11-17 minute Pink Floyd cousin song); a drum solo if you will; with just three images representing three big pigs and their funky feats of footedness, and the three days left in Freezermas. One image is about ongoing research; the other two about bizarre cases that kinda freak me out (enough to want to know more about them).

Stomach-Churning Rating: 4/10, not for gore but for surreality; things that should not be. Especially the 2nd picture.

Above: X-ray GIF (may take a while to load) from our 3D XROMM analyses of foot biomechanics, here showing a pig studied by Dr. Olga Panagiotopoulou (also RVC Fellow Jeff Rankin; and Prof. Steve Gatesy at Brown University). With data like these, we not only can measure how the tiny bones move, but also get better estimates of the loads on the soft tissues within those feet. Those loads should relate to the risks of musculoskeletal injury or disease. This GIF is just a teaser for some fantastic 3D images we’re producing. The pig’s feet were normal. The odd little spheres on them are skin-adhered markers that let us compare how external estimates of skeletal motion compare to actual motion; normally this is a big source of error.

I know little about this case (seems to trace back to an original Brazilian news story), posted on Reddit (link here), except that the overgrown, grossly deformed toes/hooves of this pig are like nothing I’ve seen before! This almost gave me nightmares. Poor chicken-footed pig. Foot deformities of this kind in pigs don’t seem to be as much of a problem as in cattle or horses; from the limited literature I’ve seen on this, they seem to have more problems with the soft tissues of their feet, such as  abscesses or inflammation of the digital cushion (padding) of the trotter.

Another crazy case; but this one I was able to track down more about after reading the Reddit post here. This news image page says:
“This photo dated November 24, 2011 shows a Chinese farmer showing off his prize swine, which he named ‘Strong Pig’, as the disabled animal keeps its 30kgs of body suspended in midair, in Mengcheng, east China’s Anhui province. The pig has become an internet sensation around China due to its ability to walk around balancing on its two front legs. TOPSHOTS CHINA OUT AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)”

Bipedal pigs– two legs good again? I guess so. Well done, Strong Pig. Well done.

Bipedal ability in injured/deformed/spooked quadrupeds is not so unusual- in addition to trained macaques and rats that have been scientifically studied, there are plenty of examples out there on the internet of videos/GIFs of bipedal cats, dogs, and so on… Post your favourites below. Hooray for the marvelous plasticity of the locomotor system! As Pink Floyd famously wrote, “Any fool knows a dog needs a home, a shelter from bipedal pigs.” (or something like that)