Ray of hope for world’s smallest hog AFP, Manas AFP, Manas A dozen of the world's smallest pigs have been released into the wild in northeastern India as part of a conservation programme to boost the population of a species once thought to have become extinct. The pygmy hog, which has the scientific name porcula salvania, lives in tall, wet grasslands and was once found along plains on the Himalayan foothills in India, Nepal and Bhutan. Its population declined in the 1960s, leading to fears it had become extinct until it was rediscovered in India's northeastern state of Assam in 1971, conservationists say.