Hyderabad: Feral pigs, a natural hybrid of wild boars and common pigs, are the newest threat to the city, as they formed a corridor of habitat covering the PJ Telangana Agricultural university, the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management and the surrounding areas in Rajendranagar, Attapur and Shamshabad.
The bio-acoustics technique to scare away wild boars is working only for 25 days and later the ferals become adaptable. Ferals showing mixed characters both physiologically and by behaviour of both wild boars and pigs have turned into a big headache for officials to tackle.
Dr V. Vasudeva Rao, national coordinator of the Vertebrate pest management, said, ”Ferals have formed a corridor and they are more than 100 in number in and around the campus. They are damaging crops grown for research and experimental purposes. Usually, bio-acoustics can hold back the wild boars for 125 days of the main crop season. They are both nocturnal and diurnal unlike wild boars which are nocturnal. This is a dangerous trend and they live neither totally in the wild nor in human habitations, but close to human habitations.”
