They’re back. And they’re getting more and more daring with each of their forays into our urban environment. We’re talking wild boars. And this week has seen one both delighting and terrifying students in a Nanjing university.
The latest incursion by wild boars into Nanjing happened this Wednesday, 24 November, on the campus of an as yet unspecified university.
Therein, the boar’s antics drew excited crowds of onlooking students who poured from their dorms to watch the spectacle.
As the boar roamed the campus, it was chased by some of the braver male students, in a scene more reminiscent of Spain’s San Fermin Festival.
Students watching the scene when the wild boar was finally captured found it comparable to a concert. One said that everyone ran out to watch since they had never before witnessed such a thing.
But why have there recently been so many reports of wild boars encroaching on our urban kingdom?
In fact , there have been no less than five instances in the past few months of wild boars ending up sometimes rather amusing situations in Nanjing. This publication reported on one in which a wild boar ran rings around a security guard outside a residential community in Gulou District.
And literally a day before the Wednesday’s university incident, media outlet The Paper carried a special commentary by one Song Jinbo.
According to Song, there are two principal reasons for the uptick in wild boar presence in the urban environment.
In “Journey to the West”, the pig is the second principal character after the Monkey King. History also tells us that wild boars are the most common and numerous wild animals.
And now there has been a rebound in population numbers. That’s largely thanks to China’s increased wildlife protection. Since 2000, wild animal populations in various parts of China have generally recovered. In recent years, tigers, leopards and other large beasts have frequently made close contact with human beings.
Secondly, humankind’s increasing encroachment on Mother Nature means that the living space of most wild animals has been unprecedentedly squeezed.
Quite a lot of the time, it’s not a case of them coming to us; it’s more us going to them.
