What if pigs could fly?
Pork becomes a luxury, and airports keep a bucket of apples by the runway.
Day one, between the fourth and fifth floors. Its shadow on the courtyard is the size of a small car.
< 0.1%chance it
ever happens
People have said “pigs might fly” to mean “never” for at least four hundred years. Lewis Carroll’s Duchess uses it on Alice, telling her she has “just about as much right as pigs have to fly”.
Suppose they could. Every domestic pig on Earth, close to a billion animals, wakes up one morning able to get off the ground. They still weigh what they weigh and eat what they eat.
< 0.1%chance this ever happens
Could it actually happen?
A farm pig weighs around 110 kilos. The heaviest birds that fly today, such as the kori bustard, weigh about 20 and only take off when they have to. Argentavis, the largest flying bird we know of, lived in Argentina six million years ago. It weighed roughly 70 kilos and its wings spanned up to seven metres. A pig would need wings at least that big and flight muscles making up about a quarter of its weight, so you’d end up rebuilding the animal from the bones out.
Day 1
The first video is filmed just before seven, from a balcony on the edge of a town. A sow walks to the end of her pen, opens a pair of wings and lifts over the fence, then the barn, then the block of flats next door. The picture shakes and there’s a lot of swearing.
By lunchtime it has a hundred million views. Most of the comments say it’s fake, until people in other countries start posting their own.
Every domestic pig has the same wings, and most of them try them that morning. They don’t stay up long. There’s nothing to eat in the sky, so they come down wherever they happen to be, which is how a regional airport ends up with a pig on runway two and no departures for the rest of the afternoon.
Butchers close early. Farmers spend the evening counting empty pens.
Year 1
A fence is no use against an animal that can leave upwards. Pig farms need roofs of steel netting, and netting that strong costs a fortune. The big farms pay for it. A lot of small ones sell up or open the gates, which makes things worse for everybody else.
Pork gets scarce, then expensive. Families who bought bacon every week start buying it for birthdays, and after a while not at all. At Christmas the ham is replaced by two chickens, and Grandad complains about it all afternoon.
Nets go up over markets, playgrounds and outdoor pools. Cafés put solid roofs over their terraces. Insurers add a clause about animals falling from a height, and nobody reads it until they need it.
The pigs settle into a routine. They fly early, while the air is cool, and spend the afternoon on rooftops near anything that smells of food.
Year 10
Kids don’t look up any more. A pig overhead gets about as much attention as a pigeon, though people still won’t park under the trees pigs like to sit in.
New flats come with glazed balconies. Washing lines are rare and tumble dryers sell well. Pilots now train for pig strikes as well as bird strikes, and most airports keep two or three people whose whole job is to lure pigs off the runway with buckets of apples.
Bacon is sold in thin slices behind glass, and most people under fifteen have never tasted it. Their grandparents bring this up a lot.
The pigs look well on it. In lab tests they do about as well as dogs on many puzzles, and they’ve worked out that restaurant kitchens have extractor fans on the roof and that car washes are warm.
Who wins
- Chicken farmersChristmas orders double in the first year and never drop back.
- Net and glass fittersEvery yard, market and balcony needs covering. The waiting list runs to two years.
- Car washesBusiness is very good.
- InsurersEvery household needs the new cover, so they sell a lot of it.
Who loses
- Bacon loversIt still exists, at a price that has people buying it by the gram.
- Outdoor cafésMost customers won’t sit under an open sky any more.
- AirlinesA 100-kilo animal on the approach path can shut a runway for hours.
- Anyone who dries washing outsideThey stop.
The catch
A flying pig would still be a pig. It would spend most of the day eating, weigh about as much as a fridge, and come down wherever the food was.
Could you live under a sky full of pigs?
67% said yes · 3 votes
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