One of the world’s rarest pigs is catching attention in England right now. Tadeo, a three-month-old Visayan warty piglet, is the first of his rare breed to be born at Whipsnade Zoo, a zoo and safari park located at Whipsnade, near Dunstable in Bedfordshire, England.
His arrival is a boost for the threatened species, BefordshireLive reports. The Visayan warty piglet is the rarest pig in the world and there are fewer than 200 left in the wild, the article said.
The new piglet’s name, “Tadeo,” means “praise” in Filipino, as the piglet’s birth is especially significant to the Whipsnade Zoo.
“Tadeo isn’t just important to his mother Tess - who has diligently cared for her first little one since his December arrival, barely letting him out of her sight - but also to his species. Visayan warty pigs are critically endangered and Tadeo is part of an important European-wide collaborative breeding program for the species,” Zookeeper Donovan Glyn said in BefordshireLive.
The breed comes from just six small islands in the Philippines. However, deforestation has left only small pockets of land for them to live in on two of the six islands. Experts say this breed is critically endangered due to habitat loss and hunting.
Piglets like Tadeo “grow hair like a rockstar’s mullet when they are older,” the article said.
