Overview
- The peer-reviewed Science study reconstructs multiple waves of human-assisted movements, including possible Sulawesi warty-pig transfers roughly 50,000 years ago.
- A major Austronesian expansion about 4,000 years ago carried domestic pigs from Taiwan through the Philippines and northern Indonesia to Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Polynesia.
- Researchers also identify colonial-era introductions from Europe, revealing layered ancestry that genomic and morphometric analyses were able to untangle.
- Many transported pigs escaped, became feral and hybridized with older lineages, with Komodo Island hybrids now serving as a key food source for endangered Komodo dragons.
- The findings prompt a reassessment of conservation policies for long-established, human-mediated animal populations on Pacific islands.