The baby in the Duchess’s house turns into a pig.
Alice encounters the baby in Chapter VI, “Pig and Pepper,” amid a chaotic kitchen filled with pepper, sneezing, flying crockery, and the Duchess’s aggressive advice about disciplining children. The Duchess thrusts the baby into Alice’s arms before Alice carries it outside.
As Alice watches, the child’s appearance changes: its ears become more like a pig’s, its nose turns up, and it begins to grunt and run away. Carroll never explains the transformation, treating it as another inexplicable event in Wonderland.
The episode is often remembered through John Tenniel’s illustration, which initially shows a human-looking infant. The pig is not the Cheshire Cat, another resident of the Duchess’s household, and the book does not say that the baby becomes a kitten, puppy, or hedgehog. Alice even concludes that although it was not an attractive baby, it makes a handsome pig.