A deformed piglet has been born with a "trunk like an elephant", heartbreaking footage has shown.
The baby animal was born on March 19 and was the only one in its litter to have the odd birth defect, which its owner said she had never witnessed before.
Fan Meiling, a farmer, explained that the sow (a female pig) that mothered the piglets belongs to her uncle in the county of Jinsha, which is in Bijie City in south-western China’s Guizhou Province.
In her video, the poor piglet has an elongated nose “like an elephant” and smooth pink skin.
The little pig, which has its tongue rolling out its mouth, is held in her hands and placed in isolation under a livestock heat lamp while its healthy siblings sleep together in baskets nearby.
Fan said: “I’d never seen anything like it before. It was very strange, and it seems everyone else thought so too.”
Sadly, the pig with the bizarre malformation died just hours later from related health problems, she revealed.
Fan said her uncle has reported the mutant piglet to the local animal husbandry bureau, with officials expected to take and examine the animal's corpse.
Currently, the cause of the piglet’s mutations are unclear but the phenomenon is sometimes linked to pesticides.
Some chemicals, known as “mutagens”, can deform cells in developing embryos which can cause miscarriages or offspring with birth defects.
This comes after a mutant piglet with a "human face and hair" was filmed being cradled by a farmer while just three hours old.
The deformed piglet was born in Venezuala earlier this month and it is not known how long it survived after birth.
Source: Read Full Article