Photo: Yasuo Konisui

Lyall Watson was born in Africa and learned to read from a bird book. He grew up in the bush, running wild in a world where adults were occupied with a World War. His early enthusiasm were later formalised by degrees in geology, botany, zoology and anthropology in South Africa; and a doctorate under the eye of Desmond Morris at the London Zoo.

Made virtually unemployable in this manner, he joined BBC TV as a producer and presenter; started a consultancy; designed and directed zoos; ran a safari company in Kenya and founded a marine national park in the Seychelles.

Awarded a Knight of the Order of the Golden Ark by the Netherlands in honour of conservation work on the International Whaling Commission in 1985.

Pigs are dramatically different from their closest and more placid relatives, sheep, deer and cattle. During forty million years of evolution, they seem to have made a series of canny decisions, adapting to changing circumstances much as humans have - by becoming more versatile, more gregarious and more curious. Sixteen species of wild pigs now occupy every continent except Australia and Antarctica, filling in the environmental gaps by deploying a panoply of domestic and feral forms - pigs for all seasons.

THE WHOLE HOG is their story. The biologist Lyall Watson has tracked pigs in the wild, observed their resourceful and playful lives, deciphered their grunts and oinks - and is convinced pigs deserve new respect.