There was no story yesterday (and no newsletter either, sorry I forgot to warn y’all about that) due to the Thanksgiving holiday we had up here, but here’s how I’m going to make it right: I’ll write about two stories today, and since I know you’re busy, I’ll cram them into the same post so you don’t have to do any extra work. How cool is that?
In fact, I’ll even make both stories about pigs. No, this isn’t a magic trick; I just have two pig stories I want to talk about, is all. They both involve how frigging smart pigs are, especially when it comes to getting food. I realize that seems to be what most pig intelligence stories are about, but despite having killed baziliions of them, humans really haven’t figured out much of their motivations other than they like to eat. If we’re not careful, we might even realize they hate getting slaughtered.
Anyway, in story the first, we learn that pigs are able to understand how mirrors work. Pigs are so smart I can barely explain the setup, but apparently if you see food in a mirror and don’t automatically look behind it like it’s a piece of glass, you’ve got an awareness level at least as good as a pig’s, and it’s something that hasn’t been observed in that many animals. It’s one of those “signs of complex cognitive processing” that someday might mean something. For now it’ll likely get discussed over ham sandwiches by people who think they’re clever but don’t understand terms like cognitive dissonance.
In story the second, we get to watch a movie! Be warned, it starts playing automatically. Pigs would know better than to do that. Anyway. Some farms have some kind of RFID tagging system for their pigs where the food gets dished out once per day in a certain amount per pig, as per the tag on their collar. The pigs have figured out that the collar’s the key, and some have taken to bringing extra collars into the feed chute so they can get seconds. They get the collars from pigs who haven’t figured out the food trick but have figured out the “remove a collar” trick, which means they go hungry, which means the farmer is dumber than his or her cleverest pig and needs to find a new vocation.
I think we’re going to see more and more stories about pig intelligence, simply because it’s not hard for researchers to get pigs. Great apes are getting rare, and they look more like people, so research is tricker. I’m really wondering how far along the research has to get before people figure out that these animals deserve a little more respect than they get from being turned into a pile of bacon for the breakfast buffet.
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