The grice was a hardy pig breed brought to the Shetland Isles, Scorland, and Ireland by the Vikings. The exact dates and history of this breed is unknown. This breed was small and hardy which made it suitable to the vast moorland of these hill countries. The grice was fond of berries and wild onions which were even named after them, Grice’s onion. They were able to live on the shrubland and low vegetation of the Shetlands, Scotland, and Ireland. This breed was difficult to fatten up, but made “excellent hams”. Its bristles were used for sewing and making rope. Its intestines were used to stretch over windows to allow light in. Grice bladders were used to make footballs (soccer balls). The grice was an aggressive breed with small tusks. It was known to escape its enclosures and raid neighboring farms doing damage. Many accounts of the grice were from people complaining about damage done to their property. One account from a complaint filed in 1810 said, “it (the grice) is voracious in the extreme, and excessively difficult to confine in pasture or to fatten: it is also destructive and mischievous, and therefore ought gradually to be extirpated”. This is just what happened as other, less aggressive breeds were brought into Scotland and Ireland. By the 1870’s, most farmers chose other breeds or used the grice as a cross breed. The last stock of grice were found on the Shetland Isles and may have lasted through the 1920’s or 1930’s. In 2007, the Shetland Museum and Archives commissioned a grice to be created. This display was modeled using a young wild boar, but no one knows exactly what a grice actually looked like. The grice made news again in 2020 when a man dug up a skull in Nesting, Shetland Isles. The skull was thought to be from a grice, but the snout seemed too short. As of 2024, the findings from the skull’s testing have yet to be reported. Although Jurassic Park is fiction, scientists are working on several de-extinction projects. In fact, in 2003 scientists did bring back the extinct Pyrenean ibex, a type of wild goat, for 7 minutes before it died, showing de-extinction is possible. The grice breed would not be a good candidate, as there are no confirmed specimens known to exist. Even if the skull found in 2020 was determined to be a grice, the DNA might not be useful for cloning. If the grice breed was brought, would it still be able to thrive on the Shetland Isles eating wild onions named after them?