Reddit reviews Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig

Hi, I'm a farmer although I do not have pigs. This is a really smart question to ask instead of jumping to conclusions.
I'm going to massively over simplify things there but...

Animals don't really have a "role in society" like you put but they do serve a function in an ecosystem. No ecosystem on earth exists without animals.

In nature when you have a monoculture (one species) that is how you spread disease. Nature loves diversity but in our farming practices because of industrialization we have massive farms with one crop so we can use machines efficiently.

You need to have diversity on a farm to break pathogen outbreaks. Imagine you had cows in a barn and they got sick and pooped everywhere all winter. Well if you bring in a new batch of cows they are just going to get the same disease. Most diseases don't transfer across species so if you bring in another species between cycles you can efficiently manage pathogens naturally.

A pig has the ability to root around and turn over ground. They are natures plow, their noses are absolutely amazing. They also eat anything so they can literally turn waste (food scrap or poop) into meat. Pigs tend to live in the forest in nature so they root around in the forest soil and turn over all sorts of things. They clear out waste and create space for new life to flourish, helping the forest or ecosystem stay healthy.

It is true what you say that farm animals have a purpose but they exist on the farm to be used for work then eaten. The domesticated animals we have now are very far removed from their wild ancestors.

One thing to think about with pigs is that they do not sweat, they control their body temperatures by creating mud wallows where they roll around in and cool off. But because they don't sweat toxins can accumulate in their body.

In Stoicism there is a word "Arete" that means excellent character. For a pig to have arete it would have to be outside with the ability to root around somewhere and socialize with other pigs. If someone does eat meat, as long as the pig got to live with arete and was killed in a humane manner it should be well within most peoples ethical frameworks to eat.

If you want to learn more there are 2 awesome books I have read on pigs. I really enjoyed Lesser Beasts, the author goes into detail about how much the ancient romans loved pork. He even mentions Seneca in it.

Lesser Beasts: https://www.amazon.ca/Lesser-Beasts-Snout-Tail-History/dp/0465052746

The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: https://www.amazon.ca/Marvelous-Pigness-Pigs-Respecting-Creation/dp/1455536970

We can guess:

As mentioned, waste disposal is somewhat addressed for Stormwind and Gilneas. The waste would probably collected in cisterns and either dumped into the canals or sold as nightsoil to fertilize the fields in Goldshire and Westfall. Technology is all over the place in WoW, but assuming they have not invented nitrogen-based fertilizers the urine of the poor would also be collected in order to fertilize the crops, too.

Farming for the horde seems to be less developed. But, they do have a lot of pigs. And the pigs seem to wander everywhere. Likely, the solid excrement is devoured by these pigs (along with other non-feces based waste), whom are then eaten by Orcs on the lower ends of society (read peons: Zug Zug). This sort of thing has been, and is still is in places, a very important part of our real life relationship with swine.

The closest human parallel to the Tauren citizens at Thunderbluff would be Native American Cliff Dwellers such as the citizens of Mesa Verde. If this comparison is accurate, they probably just dump it off the side of the bluff. On the other hand, Tauren are cows, so their nightsoil would probably bring the best prices in Azeroth.

> This is probably because they 'self domesticated' themselves thousands of years ago, and have essentially thrown themselves in with us.

This is basically what pigs did, too. I wish I could link to an article, but here's a great book on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Lesser-Beasts-Snout---Tail-History/dp/0465052746/