Island Of Pigs in the Bahamas

The pigs that live on Big Major Cay are semiferal. This is a tiny, uninhabited island, thickly forested. About a dozen pigs live here, and there are different stories about how that happened. Some say the pigs swam to the island after a shipwreck; others say sailors left them here, planning to come back and eat them.

The family of the woman from whom I rented a cottage, on nearby Staniel Cay, said they brought their pigs to Big Major Cay in the early 1990s. Recently, they’ve become a kind of phenomenon. The comedian Amy Schumer posted a photograph on Instagram that showed her and her buddies (including Jerry Seinfeld) hanging out with one of the pigs on the island.

Photographs by ROBIN SCHWARTZ