The more mundane story is that the animals are descended from domesticated pigs that were kept at a home on nearby Staniel Cay during the '90s. Pungent piggy smells wafting from the sty caused ...

Staniel Cay is ranked #19 out of 22 things to do in Bahamas. See pictures and our review of Staniel Cay.

A colony of pigs in the Exumas, a set of islands in the northern part of the Bahamas, rushes into the ocean in hopes of food every time they hear boats motoring nearby.

Or perhaps the island pigs were a business scheme to attract tourists to a nearby resort at Staniel Cay. By day the pigs take to the water, swimming in the clear Bahamian seas in search for food.

Life is very good at Staniel Cay, a two-square-mile island with about 80 residents, in the Exumas island chain in the Bahamas. It’s no mystery why it’s listed in 1,000 Places to See Before You ...

This new way of thinking about pigs is precisely how the cherished swimming pigs came to be. When farmers from Staniel Cay would boat over to feed their stock, they discovered something unexpected.

Kirsten Doyle: “So it’s an island in the Bahamas near Staniel Cay, and no one lives there, there’s just pigs on it, and everyone goes there and feeds the pigs and swims with them.

After Staniel Cay, we headed farther north for some quiet nature time in the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. Our first stop there was Compass Cay, where we hiked along a mangrove river to Rachel’s ...