Short answers, pulled from the story.
Archaeological evidence places the first domestication of pigs in the Near East around the Tigris Basin more than 11,400 years ago. A separate domestication event began in China approximately 8,000 years ago.
Pigs cannot cool themselves through thermal sweating like most other mammals because they possess limited eccrine sweat glands restricted strictly to the snout. They rely on wallowing in mud or water to dissipate heat when temperatures rise above their thermoneutral zone.
China produced 55 million tonnes of pork in 2023, making it the world's largest producer followed by the European Union and then the United States. Global production reached 120 million tonnes that year with approximately 1.5 billion pigs slaughtered annually.
In 2021 pigs became the first animals to successfully donate organs to human bodies through genetic engineering. Scientists removed a specific carbohydrate called Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose from donor pigs to prevent rejection by the human immune system.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic was caused by an influenza A variant that emerged directly from pig populations. Pigs were essential to the first outbreak of Nipah virus in 1999 where 93% of infected humans had contact with pigs.