Wild Pigs are turning Electric Blue in California. Here’s why.
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — General Discussion
TaraDeS — 7 months ago(August 19, 2025 10:11 AM)
Wild Pigs are turning Electric Blue in California. Here’s why.
Feral hogs with
"slushie-blue"
innards turned up in Monterey earlier this year.
And not for the first time.
A young wild boar stands at Joseph D. Grant County Park in Santa Clara County, California.
Dan Burton heard of pigs with electric blue meat in California years ago from an old-timer he used to hunt with, but he’d brushed it off as urban legend. So when he cut open a dead wild pig in Monterey County, California, this past February, he was surprised to see blue fat — vivid,
"7/11 slushie"
blue — beneath the skin.
The colour came from the blue dye of rodent poison, he correctly suspected, specifically from anticoagulant rodenticide bait containing the chemical diphacinone. He tipped off the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which confirmed the presence of diphacinone and sounded the alarm to local hunters.
It wasn’t the first Time.
Diphacinone is a restricted chemical in California, meant to be used only in specific circumstances for infestation control. The state tightly regulates anticoagulant rodenticides, but it doesn’t enforce a total ban.
So it still shows up where it’s not supposed to be: in the bodies of many of California’s iconic animals, including condors, black bears, bobcats and in the somewhat less beloved feral pigs.
Wild animals with bright blue flesh have turned out in California.
Burton, who owns
Urban Trapping Wildlife Control
, was hired in late February to deal with wild pigs encroaching on an 800-acre ranch along the Salinas river. On multiple late-night stakeouts, he watched thick-furred pigs trot up from the banks of the Salinas to the ranch’s fence, snuffling for the ground squirrel bait stations affixed there — and the diphacinone-laced oats within.
The hard plastic bait containers were standard-issue and secure, but a California feral pig can weigh up to 200 pounds and makes
"a worthy opponent"
, said Burton. The pigs easily broke up the containers and scarfed up the blue pellets. Months after Burton sent the California DFW a meat sample for lab testing in March, the agency posted a statement on July 30 warning local hunters to
"use caution when harvesting game animals and be aware of potential risks".
In large doses, diphacinone causes severe bleeding in humans and other mammals that can eventually be fatal. There isn’t a lot of science to detail how much game meat, and at what level of contamination, a person can eat before getting sick. One study from 2011 found that cooking it would not make it safe.
No other blue-tinged animals have been reported in Monterey County since March, said Krysten Kellum, Information Officer at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in an email. But the department has seen these reports before. A California feral pig made headlines a decade ago for its bizarre, cobalt-coloured fat. And California hunters were warned of diphacinone contamination in 2021, after a flock of geese with blue innards were found in the San Francisco Bay area.
Diphacinone-laced rodent poisons won’t always turn animals brilliant blue, making it hard for hunters to identify contamination. The strength of colour depends on how much dyed bait the animal eats. Most diphacinone-polluted birds and bigger animals bypass the bait altogether, absorbing the chemical instead by preying on rodents that are themselves contaminated.
Wild hogs and other animals eat rodenticide pellets or consume small rodents, who did.
Anticoagulant rodenticides were found in the livers of 10 of 12 black bear samples collected from around California, 10 of 120 wild pigs and zero of 37 mule deer, according to a 2018 study from the
United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services
. A data analysis by the
Department of Pesticide Regulation
found diphacinone contamination in more than 50% of 64 mountain lions tested from 2015 to 2016. Other studies detected diphacinone in California condors, bobcats, black bears, San Joaquin kit foxes, red-tailed hawks and northern spotted owls.
"It’s really widespread poisoning,"
said Jonathan Evans, Environmental Health Legal Director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
"The ability of the anticoagulants to bioaccumulate through the food web is dramatic."
In 2024, California capped a decade of growing restrictions on anticoagulant rodenticides with a bill that put them all on moratorium, except for agricultural use or in the protection of public health or water supplies. The bait stations that were bulldozed by the Monterey County pigs were legal, said Burton, the wildlife trapper. The restrictions are still the most stringent of any state, said Evans — although they are not written in stone.
Nationally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also restricted who can buy and how much can be sold of the stronger, second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides. Still, across the U.S. there were over 3,000 reported ingestions of anticoagulant rodenticides, acc -
TaraDeS — 7 months ago(August 19, 2025 12:24 PM)
Masher August 19, 2025 01:11 PM
Member since January 27, 2025
Thanks Newscum
People should actually be able to take some responsibility for themselves and their environment.
Well, some certain individuals still shoot around with lead ammunition.