BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Add up all the wild hogs in Louisiana, and you get roughly the same number of people who live in Baton Rouge and New Orleans combined.

The exploding feral hog population in the southeastern U.S. causes an estimated $1.5 billion in damage every year as the voracious eaters root up pastures, destroy crops and generally wreak havoc everywhere they go.

LSU's Agricultural Center is working on another strategy that could one day be used in conjunction with the sharpshooting to get wild hog populations under control.

Phil Elzer, the LSU AgCenter's program leader for animal sciences, tells The Advocate the idea is to use the animals' legendary greediness against them in developing a bait that proves lethal to wild pigs.

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Information from: The Advocate, www.theadvocate.com