Three Little Pigs: Durrell welcomes Penelope, Babs and Diosa

Thursday 29 March 2018

Three female Visayan warty pigs have become the newest members of the Jersey Zoo family in hopes to save the species, which only has around 200 left in the wild.

Sisters Penelope and Babs have come from Newquay Zoo and two-year-old Diosa has been rehomed from Bristol Zoo. They arrived into the island at the start of March and have been quarantined for the past few weeks and gradually introduced to each other, but they are now ready to meet visitors from Friday.

Visayan warty pigs are native to several islands in the Philippines but they are now only found on two of those islands – Negros and Panay – as their habitat has rapidly reduced, threatening the species

Durrell Mammal Keeper Adam Bold explained: “They are one of the rarest pigs on the planet. They are critically endangered and in recent years these have suffered a lot unfortunately from habitat destruction with illegal chopping the forests and also from hunting.”

Although this will be the first time the zoo has had Visayan warty pigs, Adam says the team at Durrell will use the skills they’ve gained from the breeding, rescue and rehabilitation work they’ve done with Pygmy Hogs in Northern India in order to protect the species.

Video: Meet the three little pigs. (Durrell/YouTube)

Visitors will only see two at a time in the enclosure behind the Gorillas, which used to house the Red River Hogs before they left in 2014, as Diosa is still getting to know the sisters individually.

They will mostly spend their time rooting around in the bark for worms or chasing each other, with Babs being the more adventurous of the two sisters despite being the younger sibling.

Along with meeting the zoo newest arrivals over the Easter weekend, visitors will also be able to see all the animals enjoy their Easter eggs and there will also be extra activities over the bank holiday, including a scavenger hunt.

Lead photo: Sisters Penelope and Babs in their new home. (3C International)