A fancy dressed man with a riding whip rides a very big pig, somewhere in England during the early 1900s.
Apparently this is still a thing in parts of rural England. Riding pigs and pig races may not have the cachet of racing horses or even grey hounds, but it does score high on the wtf factor.
I wonder if these thoroughbred racing pigs end up as ham or bacon in the end. This one certainly looks well fed.
Pig racing is a hold over from old country traditions but it has gotten a makeover within the Minecraft universe, where pig racing is a popular sport.
In Minecraft, Pigs are passive animal mobs. They will not attack a human and provide useful resources and transportation. Pigs can be outfitted with a saddle which then allows the player to ride them. If killed by fire, the pigs produce pork chops. If killed by lightning they turn into zombie piigmen.
It is interesting to compare the way our society has evolved in the more than 100 years that separate the first picture from the screen shot of a popular video game. Upheavals have overturned dynasties, reshaped the map of the world; technology has allowed us to reach the moon. But there is an uninterrupted, though somewhat, meandering link between the country pig races and zombie pigmen of Minecraft.
