Sakes Alive

Pendant

René-Jules Lalique

1901

They’re like if bears had knives protruding from their closed mouths and Didn’t Know When To Quit. Their survival instincts when they’re wounded aren’t “run away and minimize injury” it’s “take the thing that hurt you down with you” They also make sounds like someone crossed a pig with an alligator.

Their head and neck alone can be like the size of an entire human torso.

Also forever laffin’ at people who think pigs are tiny, ‘cause we designed those things can get in the neighbourhood of a thousand pounds in ideal circumstances. 

It’s like when people assume Tuna must be small because they’ve only ever experienced them in hockey puck form.

Very carefully, I would imagine.

WIld boar babies are rather cute, like living humbugs…

…but the adults and their ferocity have been associated with warriors for thousands of years, from Mycenaean Greece (a helmet made from sections of boar tusk)…

…through Celtic Europe (reconstructed carnyx war-horns and standards)…

…Ancient Rome (the crest of Legion 20 “Valeria Victrix”). A couple more legions also used a boar as their crest - I wonder did they squabble over which was the “right” one the way a couple of Swiss cantons had a little war over whose bear was best…?

…then Anglo-Saxon and pre-Viking helmet crests…

…right up to the late Middle Ages (here the white boar badge of Richard Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III of England)…

…and the blue boar badge of the Earl of Oxford, more usually represented by the De Vere arms, quarterly gules and or, in the first a molet argent.

After Richard was defeated at Bosworth in 1485, there was a run on blue paint as inn-signs were changed to reflect new loyalties since Oxford was on the winning side…

And pigs will definitely eat people.

It gets mentioned in the movie “Snatch”, the book/movie “Hannibal” and the webcomic “Lackadaisy Cats”, among numerous other fictional sources, and IRL it’s suspected to be the reason why numerous missing persons have stayed missing.

More here (another comment to this same OP) and here (slightly different).

Here’s some boar-hunting armour for dogs, ancient…

…and modern…

…and the modern one looks very like a simple style of ancient…

today is Nov. 15. the FCC, under chairman Ajit Pai, will not listen to the public despite millions of comments in support of net neutrality. They are going to try their hardest to kill net neutrality, which in turn will kill the internet, which in turn will help eradicate democracy. it won’t just affect Americans, it has the potential to affect the entire internet, something we ALL use daily. you can bet your ass other countries will see america doing this, and use it as an excuse to do it in their own countries.

this is what buying a plan without net neutrality looks like there:

you have to pay MORE for features you’re already guaranteed to have under net neutrality. and in america, you already know how expensive everything is.

democrats AND republicans both want net neutrality. advocacy groups in touch with congress have said that if your members of congress receive calls from you, they are more encouraged and more likely to take action to stop Pai’s plan to gut net neutrality. after Nov. 22, it will be MUCH HARDER to convince your member of congress.

please, call them. call them daily.

When the remains of this older Neanderthal were discovered at Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1957, his many physical injuries and disabilities were immediately apparent. Analysis of his skull showed that he suffered a crushing blow to the head near his eye socket when he was young, likely causing some visual impairment. His right hand and forearm were missing, the result of an amputation. He likely walked with a serious gait, and he suffered from hyperostotic disease (DISH), which is associated with muscular pain and reduced mobility along the spine.

But a new analysis of this specimen, known as Shanidar 1, shows he had another major disability—one not noticed during earlier examinations. New research published in PLOS One reveals that the bony growths found in this Neanderthal’s ear canals would have resulted in serious hearing loss. So this Paleolithic-era hunter-gatherer, according to the updated analysis conducted by anthropologists Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in St. Louis and Sébastien Villotte of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, was profoundly deaf.

Yet despite his deafness and his other physical setbacks, Shanidar 1 died between 40 and 50 years of age (based on dental analysis). By Paleolithic standards, he was an old man. The only way he could have lived to such a ripe old age is by receiving considerable help from others. “More than his loss of a forearm, bad limp and other injuries, his deafness would have made him easy prey for the ubiquitous carnivores in his environment and dependent on other members of his social group for survival,” said Trinkaus in a statement.