Mo Ganji: Visayan Warty Pig | Visayas-Pustelschwein | Sus cebifrons | No. 233/250 from work group 8/99

Visayan Warty Pig | Visayas-Pustelschwein | Sus cebifrons

Mo Ganji turns toward the Visayan warty pig — a forest-dwelling wild pig endemic to the central Philippine islands — by letting the single line move toward essence rather than robustness or behavior. The line condenses the being into a reduced coherence, setting aside mass, bristles and familiarity so that presence can surface without narrative. In Ganji’s understanding, the line does not belong to the pig alone; it remains open, reminding us that every form is also a human concept provisionally placed upon a living continuum.

Sus cebifrons is listed as Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List. Once widespread across several islands in the Visayas, the species has been extirpated from much of its former range. Today, it survives only in small, fragmented populations on Negros and Panay, primarily within protected forest areas.

The principal threats include extensive deforestation, agricultural expansion, hunting, and hybridization with domestic pigs. Because the Visayan warty pig depends on intact forest ecosystems and has limited remaining habitat, population recovery is slow and uncertain. Small population size also increases vulnerability to disease and genetic decline.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the pig can be encountered beyond resilience or utilitarian association. It allows the being to be perceived as a life shaped by forest continuity, suggesting how even adaptable forms falter when the ground that once supported them is steadily reduced to isolated remnants.