Georgia island hogs descended from Spanish pigs now help scientists study obesity

Centuries ago, Spanish explorers sailing along the coast of what is now the United States brought pigs with them as a practical food supply. Some escaped, while others were deliberately released so future expeditions would find animals waiting when they returned. On Ossabaw Island, a barrier island off the coast of Georgia near Savannah, those pigs became something very different.Cut off from other pig populations and exposed to an environment where food could be plentiful during one part of the year and scarce during another, generations of Ossabaw hogs developed an extraordinary ability to store fat when food was available.That adaptation helped them survive on the island. Hundreds of years later, the same trait has made their descendants valuable to scientists studying obesity, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease.Pigs brought across the Atlantic became an isolated populationEuropean explorers began bringing livestock to the Americas in the 1500s.