Domestic pigs of very small size have traditionally been reared in many countries in Asia – among them China, Laos, Taiwan, Tibet and Vietnam – in Central and South America, and in West Africa. Some oceanic islands have populations of small pig, which in some cases are
feral. In the mid-twentieth century, researchers began
selective breeding of pigs for small size with the aim of creating animals suitable for laboratory use. From about 1942 various strains of small pig were imported from
Manchuria to Japan; from 1945 Hiroshi Ohmi selected these for small size, leading to the creation of the
Ohmini, which was used both as a laboratory animal and for meat. The
Minnesota Miniature was bred at the
Hormel Institute of the
University of Minnesota from 1949, from a stock of
Piney Woods,
Guinea Hog and
wild boar from the United States and
Ras-n-lansa from
Guam. In the 1960s some pigs of the traditional Vietnamese
Lon I breed were imported to western Europe for exhibition in zoos; some of these were later taken to North America, where they contributed to the development of the
Vietnamese Pot-bellied type. From the late 1960s, researchers at the or Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics of the
University of Göttingen in
Lower Saxony cross-bred these Vietnamese pigs with Minnesota Miniature and
German Landrace stock to produce the
Göttingen Minipig. Pigs of this kind were later used for medical research in the fields of toxicology, pharmacology, pulmonology, cardiology, aging, and as a source of
organs for
organ transplantation. == Use ==