Mysterious wave of death strikes the Bahamas’ famous swimming pigs – Washington Post

A mysterious wave of deaths recently struckBig Major Cay, theuninhabited Bahamas islandfamous for its tourist-friendly swimming pigs.

Up tohalf of the pig colony died and the bodies were tossed into the sea, according to reports from over the weekend. Early investigationscould not identify an explicit cause of death.

Wayde Nixon, a Bahamas man who brought the pigs to the island decades ago, suggestedthat tourists killed the animals with a lethal diet. Withunrestricted access to the pigs, visitors had been seen giving the animals junk food as well as booze.

We had the government vet in there [and] examined them all thoroughly, Nixon told the Nassau Guardian.Seven or eight pigs died, he said, leaving about 15 alive. The ones that survived appeared to be healthy.

Kim Aranha, president of the Bahamas Humane Society, indicated to the Nassau-based newspaper Tribune 242 that there were fewer pigs remaining on the island than initially reported.

I understand there are seven or eight pigs still alive, Aranha said, though she said this was about equal to the number of deaths.Veterinarians collected samples of the dead pigs,but it was unclear how long a laboratory analysis would take.

Its really a mystery as to what killed these beautiful animals. I believe most of the carcasses were in the ocean, Aranha told the Tribune. It could just be a horrible accident where they ate something poisonous. It could be malicious but I dont really see why someone would go out of their way to hurt those lovely animals.

She added that there were silly sailors who were known to try to get the pigs drunk. But tour operators out of Nassau treated the animals with respect, she said.

Part of the Exuma island chain, Big Major Cay, also known as Pig Beach, isin theCaribbean Sea to the southeast of Nassau. Until the deaths, the cay had been billed as a sort of porcine paradise. The pigs dog-paddled through the crystal sea, drank from the islandsspring of fresh water and got fat on a steady supply of food brought by tourists, who visited the island by the boatload.

But selfie-happy tourists were not the only indignitiesthat the four-legged residents survived in recent years. The pig colony endured an invasion of bikini-clad reality show contestants during an episode of The Bachelor. The pigs had a brief cameoin the 2013music video for Timber, the Pitbull dance-pop number featuring Ke$ha. Fueled by celebrity visits, a featureon NBCsToday show and a beach made for Instagram, the pigs popularity expanded.

So, too, did their origin stories. Ancient mariners had left the pigs behind on the island, some said. The cache of would-be pork was forgotten, then rediscovered. Or perhaps the beasts were the only living remainder of a crashed pirate ship.That foreigners had accidentally released pigs into the Bahamian wilds was not an alien narrative. Feral boarson the Great Inagua Island, to the south of Pig Beach, were descendants of pigs housed ina mid-1700sFrench garrison.

The truth, according to the Today show, was that the swimming pigs were the result of a more recent fable. When fears about thecataclysmic Y2Kmillennium bugreached a fever pitch in the late 1990s,two farmers, fearing that food supplies would crash along with computers,bought the pigs and raised them on the island.

After the pigs were discovered dead over the weekend, Nixon, oneof the two farmers, lamented that the Pig Beach phenomenon had spiraled out of control.

Right now its blowing out of proportion with people, anybody bringing food there, anybody doing whatthey [want to] do, he toldthe Nassau Guardian.We have people coming there giving the pigs beer, rum, riding on top of them, all kind of stuff.

The Bahamas government hasnow barred tourists from feeding the pigs. Nixon sought support from the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism to restrict visitors from getting too close to the pigs. Establishing a safe viewing distance would still allow tourists to photograph the famous swimming pigs, he said, while protecting theanimals that remain.