Pig toilet – Bacon anyone?
A fuuru (pig toilet) in early 20th century Okinawa.
China’s government has been trying to ban them for years now. These toilets are a sort of outhouse sitting on top of a pig-sty with live pigs where the shit goes. The pigs are kept there to eat the people’s fresh shit, while the pee drains down thru the ground.
Pigs have traditionally been regarded as dirty animals because they eat excrement and wallow in mud produced from their own urine and are associated with trichinosis, a disease is caused by the quarter-inch-long trichina worm, a kind of roundworm which digs into the muscles and produces cysts that can be fatal.
This type of thing is still going and commonly used in some rural towns in Asia. Pig toilets were once common in rural China, where a single Chinese ideogram (pinyin: hùn) signifies both “pigsty” and “privy”. Funerary models of pig toilets from the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD 220) prove that it was an ancient custom. These arrangements have been strongly discouraged by the Chinese authorities in recent years; although as late as 2015, they could still be found in remote northern provinces.Chinese influence may have spread the use of pig toilets to Okinawa before World War II.
Han Dynasty Pig Sty-Latrine
Model of toilet with pigsty (China, Eastern Han dynasty 25 – 220 AD).
- Besides eating human feces (poop) – a pig’s saliva also contains pheremones such as S-alphandrosterol that communicate sexual desires when pork meat is consumed. Male pigs and truffles release this steroid. Females will go to great lengths to get a whiff of the stuff which is why female pigs are such good truffle hunters.
- Pigs are very smart. They are often ranked higher than dogs on intelligence lists. They make affectionate pets and have been taught to do a variety of tricks. They are also relatively independent. Pigs are difficult to herd over long distances.
