[chajin]

I wonder if the attitude towards Iberian pigs in Muslim-ruled Spain was similar to the attitude towards wild boar in Edo-era Japan. In Japan, Buddhist priests were supposed to not eat meat, but they could eat fish/seafood, so they would catch wild boar and call it yamakujira, or "mountain whale," thereby breaking Lincoln's rule that calling a dog's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. It wouldn't surprise me if Iberian pigs were cooked and eaten as "Andalusian goat" or some such absurd made-up name.

[Verginius Rufus]

The South American capybara, the largest rodent in the world, spends much of its time in the water. Back when the Catholic Church forbade eating meat on Fridays (but allowed eating fish), the locals persuaded themselves that capybara could be considered fish because they spent so much time in the water.