US mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people

Between 2004 and 2020, the number of US states reporting feral hog populations rose in near-perfect correlation with mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people, implying either that feral hogs are heavy smartphone users, or that connectivity somehow emboldens Sus scrofa. The hogs, for their part, have expanded into at least 35 states and show no sign of needing a data plan. The phones have expanded into nearly 130 subscriptions per 100 people, which suggests Americans have been just as difficult to contain.

Feral hog range expansion across US states is a slow-moving ecological process driven by deliberate releases, escapes from hunting preserves, and natural dispersal — a trend documented steadily through the 2000s and 2010s. Mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people grew sharply over the same period as smartphones replaced feature phones and multi-SIM households became common, passing 100 per 100 people around 2012. With only nine data points spanning 16 years, both series are essentially monotonically increasing, which mechanically produces very high correlations between any two such series regardless of underlying connection.

With few enough data points and two things that only ever went up, a high correlation is nearly guaranteed. The smaller the dataset, the easier it is for coincidence to look like destiny.