The pig, or boar, is the twelfth and last sign of the Chinese zodiac, closing the cycle. As a birth-sign it is read for honesty, generosity, diligence and good-natured tolerance, and it is strongly associated with prosperity and material comfort, a wholly positive reputation in the Chinese scheme, where the pig in the household was a sign of wealth, the very character for family showing a pig under a roof. It is associated with the late-evening hours and, in the elemental scheme, with water. That the abundance-animal of one half of the world is the forbidden animal of the other is one of the sharper illustrations of how differently traditions read the same creature.
Hawaiian tradition gives the pig its own demigod, Kamapuaa, a shape-shifting figure who could take fully human or fully porcine form and who appears in the mythology as both a formidable warrior and a trickster suitor of the fire goddess Pele; roasted pig remains the central offering of the traditional luau feast, and the animal's ceremonial importance in Hawaii and across wider Polynesia is entirely independent of the East Asian traditions recorded elsewhere in this pair of articles. Independent of any symbolism, pigs rank among the most cognitively capable domestic animals studied, with problem-solving and object-recognition abilities comparable to dogs and even some primates in controlled tests, a modern finding that sits easily alongside the wholly positive, prosperity-linked reading Chinese tradition already gives the animal.