Wild pigs' flesh turning neon blue in California
phys.org
phys.org
Wow - noticeable at least!
The blue is sufficient but not necessary for the animal to be impacted by the poison. It is a very vibrant blue though, and anyone would be concerned if they opened an animal and saw that.
> Diphenadione is a vitamin K antagonist that has anticoagulant effects and is used as a rodenticide against rats, mice, voles, ground squirrels and other rodents. The chemical compound is an anti-coagulant with active half-life longer than warfarin and other synthetic 1,3-indandione anticoagulants.[3][4] ... Rat poisons with diphacinone are often dyed bright blue to signal toxicity.[8]
Huh, thanks.
Eyes can't be blue either.
Like when rich people consumed food and beverages from pure silver plates (100's of years ago) their blood supposedly turned purple/blueish. Hence the term (at least in Dutch) that "he is of blue blood" = he rich af.
Or that's all a myth. Not sure.
This is usually said to refer to the fact that someone's skin is so pale you can see the veins through it.
(Also, it refers to pedigree rather than wealth, in English...)
I would expect silver to turn things black, not blue.
(Although see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria )
elevated methemoglobin in human blood causes brown blood causes blue skin
> Eyes can't be blue either.
The blue in blue eyes (and green) is a structural property, not a pigment property. This is also why eye color changes for these people much more dramatically than people with darker colored eyes (see Hazel eyes).
It's color caused by structure, but that doesn't make it not a color. A lot of things aren't going to "have color" if you use that definition. Including the sky...
Have you eveer seen a blueberry? Or a Concord grape? Or a damson plum?
While I don't think the average person is going to notice or care about these "nuances" I would be pretty surprised if anyone that huts would not immediately notice. The "well I look at my veins and they are blue" argument only holds up if you don't look at the pictures in the link. Like they just look very different. Easy to sound right while being very wrong (and often hard to explain why it is wrong without sounding like nitpicking). It's not like they're hunting horseshoe crabs...
[0] https://askabiologist.asu.edu/questions/is-blood-blue
[1] Pale enough that a phlebotomist once told me I was the easiest person to draw blood from because it is so easy to see my veins.
The reason anything is the color it is is because that’s how it appears.
Am I missing something?
It’s like saying, “oh the sky is only blue because it scatters blue light”. Well then the sky is blue. Full stop.
“Red paint is only red because it happens to absorb certain other color spectrums leaving mostly red light”. Ok then it’s red.
> Am I missing something?
Now yes, the sky will be yellow or whatever color the plastic is but if you go around and start telling everyone that they'll call you crazy.
If you really want to get into it, colors are also determined by what everyone else sees. You could be colorblind and what color something is to you is not what color that thing is to everybody else. Or you could take the sun itself, which everyone agrees is yellow except some armchair expert redditor who once heard in science class that "the sun is green" and is willing to discount his eyes rather than hear the rest of the discussion where it is white because it emits in a broad spectrum and appears yellow on Earth because the blue sky removes some colors before we can see it. So you can imagine a future civilization where most people don't live on Earth might call the sun "white" but for now everyone will call it that because it is yellow. This is a bit in your favor but you might notice the main point of my previous comment isn't about blood looking blue so much as the pigs being fucking neon blue and that blue looks nothing like blood and could not be mistaken for the same thing. Look at the pictures.
Which makes a lot more sense, since dyes can only darken right? You can turn white fat blue, while red muscle would at most turn a somewhat darker purple which might not be so obvious?
There are several good pictures...
To quote George Carlin "I am always thinking big questions like, Why is there no blue food?". This is also why most food handling gear in manufacturing is blue coloured. Easy to see.
Vaguely related,there was a small chemical spill near my house about a month back and it made it to the local creek. You could tell because they add that neon blue dye so that it is obvious when there is a spill.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/17/banyule-...
The dyes are large, planar aromatic molecules designed to resist rapid breakdown in the environment or the animal’s digestive tract.
Yes, everyone knows you don't tell sick people that enjoy poisoning animals where the poison is. But don't be a dick, do tell your normal neighbors (the vast majority unless you're extremely unlucky) so their pets aren't harmed or can receive prompt treatment.
> How are feral pigs destructive? Let us count the ways.
They are invasive and cause millions of dollars in agricultural damage each year, rooting and trampling through a wide variety of crops. They prey on everything from rodents, to deer, to endangered loggerhead sea turtles, threatening to reduce the diversity of native species. They disrupt habitats. They damage archaeological sites. They are capable of transmitting diseases to domestic animals and humans. In November, a woman died in Texas after being attacked by feral hogs—a very rare, but not unprecedented occurrence.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/feral-pigs-are-inv...
But also...... kinda not hyperbolic, given the industry that has sprung up around this:
The other one that's wild, when they lift a bail of hay and like a thousand rats shoot out and these little terriers destroy the rats
The cause is known: "Blue tissue and flesh can be a sign of rodenticide ingestion, which can occur by eating bait – which often contains dye to identify them as poison."
The tipoff is that people usually write it as one word, "clickbait," when talking about a sensationalistic title designed to simulates clicks generating ad revenue.
OK, so maybe that person's joke wasn't so successful, but it seems like a fairly gentle attempt, which shouldn't be punished.
Seems wordy.
The poison was coming from baited squirrel traps which the pigs were seeking out and eating from.
In many areas, cat rescues will supply food, spay/neuters, flea meds, etc. for the ferals.
https://wafcwg.org.au/information/felixer-grooming-traps/
https://thylation.com/products/
https://southwestnrm.org.au/project/felixer-cat-grooming-tra...
They identify cats and fire a goopy toxin onto the cat fur.
Or are you in favour of the death of bilbies, quokkas, quolls, potoroos, et al en masse?
These nice ladies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7h9V4aKlJw
like to flush ferals out with grass fires and net, spear, or shoot them as they flee and either toss them or take them home to eat.
Some of our native birds have gone. Some have gone as low as five remaining. Get cats out of New Zealand.
"Wild pig flesh turns neon blue after eating rodent poison"
California, Authorities, and Alarm are all unneeded
That is the worst imaginable headline. No part of it is news, it is trivia.
How about:
"California's wild pigs being poisoned: Authorities are sounding the alarm"
Eh, too much news, boring.
Could there be a way to mix the two headlines to make the story both interesting and informative?
> "California's wild pigs being poisoned: Authorities are sounding the alarm"
Well, that one would be an outright lie. Authorities are quoted in the piece. They say they're aware of the situation and it's caused by rat poison. They are not alarmed, nor do they suggest anyone else should be alarmed.
Hey I live in CA!
Ohh... the Authorities!
The Alarm is raised!
the rest is evocative and loaded terms too, "wild" "pigs" "flesh!" "neon" - but at least they are unexaggerated.
It's a gross headline
"Processing" usually means taking the meat out for consumption, the skin for leather, etc.
Any idea why the meat of a wild pig was being processed in CA? What would they have done with it?
From the article:
Burton said his company discovered the affected animals when it was hired by an agriculture firm in late February and March to trap wild pigs that were going into the firm's fields.
His company traps the pigs and then euthanizes them according to state law, he said. He usually donates the carcass and meat of the pigs to low-income families.