Hunters Baffled By Pig’s Blue Flesh (Photos)

A group of hunters in California thought it was their lucky day when they spotted a pig on their family property. They killed the pig and were looking forward to cooking up the meat, but when they cut the animal open, they were shocked by what they found inside. 

After making a shocking discovery, the hunters shared photos of their findings online, according to Newsiosity. 

As noted when the photos were shared, the hunters expected to cut open the pig they had hunted to find perfectly normal pork to cook up. However, what they found instead was a bright fluorescent blue coloring all over the pig’s insides. 

The hunters were shocked by what they found. The pig’s skin and organs appeared mostly normal, but the fat inside the animal’s body was all stained blue.

The confused hunters began to speculate what may have caused the bizarre coloring, wondering if perhaps the pig had suffered from copper poisoning or if food dye had made is way into a water source. 

After photos of the pig were shared online, viewers speculated as well, but most were stumped by what they saw. Some suggested that the photos were faked, but the hunters confirmed that the photos were in fact real. 

In order to learn more about what may have given the pig blue flesh, the hunters sent samples to Robert Poppenga, a veterinarian and toxicologist at the University of California-Davis’ Animal Health and Food Safety Lab. 

Poppenga confirmed that the blue meat was real and offered a possible explanation on what caused this.

“The blue pigment is almost certainly from a blue dye put into an anticoagulant bait formulation [rodent poison], but we could not verify it analytically,” Poppenga told Business Insider, according to Newsiosity. “We had a similar case in a feral pig a few years ago.”

One Reddit user shared a theory in the comments section of the original post.

“This is called “blue pig syndrome” and was first found in Uganda in 1998. Tests at the Makerere University Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and a veterinary reference laboratory in Pirbright, UK, could not establish the cause of the syndrome by 2013 and as far as I know it is still a mystery today,” the user commented. “I know some scientists have suggested Pseudomonas cyanagenus, but this only causes this blue color to happen after the pig has been slaughtered and in unclean environments. You can see in the photo that the blue pigment is in the subcutaneous fat layer before the pig was cut into. P. cyanagenus also causes a glowing blue color and not this sort of light blue and is also found all over the pig, not just in the fat layer.”

The user continued, “My guess is it may be something the pig is ingesting that is fat soluble, which is why we are seeing it only in the fat layers. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about Uganda and I know nothing about that pig’s life so I can’t guess what it’s eating. But I bet when we find out it’ll be some sort of fat soluble “food” they are ingesting.”

Sources: Newsiosity, Reddit / Photo Credit: Imgur