Mary Bickert, age 12, of Allentown, Penn., for her question:
ARE PIGS SMARTER THAN HORSES?
The leading hog raising state is Iowa, where about 15 million of the animals go to market each year. The next leading states, in order, are Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota. Farmers feed the hogs corn and other grains such as sorghum, barley, wheat, rye and oats. They also feed them meal and tankage made from bones and tendons.
About a quarter of all the meat eaten in the United States and Canada comes from hogs. This animal provides bacon, ham, sausage and pork chops.
The hog is an intelligent animal, farmers will tell you. The scientists rate the animal high on the animal scale. A pig is a hog that is usually less than 10 weeks old.
Among all the hoofed animals, the elephant and the horse respond remarkably well to commands and signals. But the hog comes out number one ahead of the others in the hoofed class as being the best problem solver.
In an intelligence contest between a pig and a horse, the pig is clearly the winner.
As long as 6 million years ago, wild hogs roamed throughout Europe and other parts of the world. Man started taming them about 8,000 years ago, scientists guess.
Hogs were taken to North and South America by explorers and colonists from Spain and England in the early 1500s.
Wild hogs continue to live in the forests and jungles in many parts of the world. They include the babirussa, or babirusa, of the East Indies, the wart hog of Africa and the wild boar that can be found in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
In parts of the southeastern United States, you'll find wild hogs called razorbacks. They have sharp, narrow backs but are descended from tame hogs that escaped from farms and became wild again.
About a third of the world's total hog population lives in China. Brazil, Russia and the United States each have about 10 percent.
Hogs now eat about 40 percent of all the corn that is grown in the United States. A special diet, heavy in corn, makes it possible for hogs to gain weight at the rate of 'about a pound and a half or more every day.
Pigs weigh about two and a half pounds at birth and usually double their weight in the first week. When fully grown, a male hog may weigh more than 500 pounds while a female will weigh between 300 and 450 pounds.
Most hogs are marketed when they are between six and seven months old and weigh from 180 to 240 pounds. Hogs kept beyond this age are usually used for breeding purposes.