Funny Snoring Mini pigs
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Vietnamese Pot-bellied is the exonym for the Lon I (Vietnamese: Lợn Ỉ) or I pig, an endangered traditional Vietnamese breed of small domestic pig.
Until the 1970s the I was probably the most numerous pig breed in northern Vietnam, with numbers running into millions. From that time, the more productive Móng Cái began to supplant it. The National Institute of Animal Husbandry of Vietnam started a conservation programme, with subsidies for farmers who reared purebred stock, but this had little benefit – there was some increase in numbers, but at the cost of increased inbreeding. In 1991, the total population of the I was estimated at 675 000, and by 2010 the estimated number was 120. In 2003 the National Institute of Animal Husbandry listed its conservation status as "critical"; in 2007 the FAO listed it as "endangered".
Small numbers of I pigs were exported in the 1960s to Canada and Sweden, to be kept in zoos or to be used for laboratory experiments. Within a decade the I had spread to animal parks in other countries in Europe; a few were reared on smallholdings. The I entered the United States from Canada in the mid-1980s, and by the end of the decade the "pot-bellied pig" was being marketed as a pet. Not all of these were purebred, and some grew to considerable size; the fad was short-lived.
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