Police seek owners of 'on the loose' boar

Police are seeking the owners of a pig they say has been running loose in Caithness.

The animal, which has now been captured, is described as a wild boar-domestic pig cross.

Some people have suggested on social media that the animal might be one of Scotland's free-roaming feral pigs.

There are thought to be a few thousand of the animals, with most of them found in parts of the Highlands and Dumfries and Galloway.

Police Scotland: "We are urgently trying to trace the owner of a wild boar cross domestic pig that has been captured after being on the run loose in Caithness recently.

"If this is your boar, please call us on 101 quoting incident ref 1337 of Thursday 5 December 2024."

boar are a native species to Scotland, but were hunted to extinction about 700 years ago.

Over about the last 10 years, populations of free-roaming pigs have become established in Dumfries and Galloway and the Highlands.

Scotland's nature agency NatureScot refers to these animals as feral pigs, and said they include hybrids - a mix of boar and domestic pigs following interbreeding.

The populations include animals that have escaped from farms or illegally released into the wild.

They are thought to number in the low thousands, according to public agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS).

The pigs have been blamed for damaging farmland and forestry.

Since April, FLS rangers have culled 46 feral pigs.