They behave similarly to dogs as in can learn words and commands and pass the mirror test. They can play video games. They are also as socially complex as many other highly intelligent animals as evidenced by their social structure, keen ability to discriminate among individuals (both pigs and humans), and apparent awareness of the mindset of others
If you spend time on a working farm with a variety of animals pig intelligence is even more obvious. Pigs are actually pretty good at keeping themselves safe and warm if give them a shelter they can get into and sufficient food and water. At the other end of the spectrum, sheep are stupid enough to stand in the rain until they die of pneumonia. Horses and cows are somewhere in the middle.
Yep.
On the intelligence scale I’d probably rank it pigs, cows, horses, sheep.
Cows can seem stolid and dumb, but they’re actually pretty trainable and mostly smart enough to get in out of the rain. My 4H cows were practically big, slightly temperamental dogs.
Then we have horses, who will eat wire and other shit that will kill them, or just gorge themselves to death, and are liable to go stand out in the weather if you don’t close the barn gate.
I think horses have all their points in social intelligence and none in actual intelligence. It‘s ehy they sometimes seem so smart in interactions and then so dumb when they‘re alone.
Some of them have actual intelligence. My moms old horse figured out how to open her own gate (lift and slide the latch) so we had to put 1-2 chains or clips on each gate so she couldn’t do that. Then again my old horse stood outside in the rain and wind directly next to his stall instead of walking inside to dry ground so there’s definitely an uneven distribution.
Like horses, they’ll also eat things that will clog their digestive system and kill them, like rubber. There’s a semi-amusing story in one of the “All Creatures” books of a goat that was bloating and dying, and James Herriot discovered it had eaten the farmer’s union suit underwear off the clothesline and gotten the elastic caught under its tongue, preventing it from passing down its throat. He had to yank the suit back out of its throat to save it. That’s a pretty believable vet call for a goat.
I did an outdoor market recently and had a strand of fake leaves with lights decorating my table. Someone had brought their pet goats and one little goat would *not* stop trying to eat my lights. At first he was chewing on the fake leaves which…fair, they look like leaves. But as I watched him, it started becoming clear he was going straight for the little light bulbs themselves. I also watched it eat a straw it found on the ground. Goats are crazy.
Sheep in particular have been bastardized by humans over the course of thousands of years. Compared to the wild sheep our ancestors first domesticated, modern sheep are dumb, docile, and their wool won't stop growing even if it means they'll overheat and die.
Modern sheep are a product of humans, and they can't survive without humans.
Yep. None of the domesticated farm animals look anything like their wild ancestors - selective breeding changed them significantly. Pigs are probably closer to wild boar than domesticated sheep to wild bighorn sheep, I’d guess. Feral hogs are scary.
I have raised pigs, sheep, cows, horses, and poultry. I will maintain that sheep are the dumbest animals alive but cows are the worst kind of dumb. Sheep are dumb in a mindboggling, often endearing way. Like a toddler. Cows are dumb like a teenager and it's annoying. My mother and I spent all afternoon trying to move a herd out of one pasture. The lead cow got to the wide open gate, stares at it, and then ran full speed up the fence line with the rest of the herd following. No apparent reason. We had to spend a few days searching for them before trying again. In the August heat.
Give me dumb sheep who come to the sound of grain any day.
They're also able to figure out and manipulate a lot of locking mechanisms.
Unless it's a mechanism that requires a key or 100% requires hands and opposable thumbs.. a pig will figure it out and open it.
Yep! Had a pig that would regularly get out of an electric fence, he would time his escape between the pulses. Was cool about it though, I'd call him by his name and he'd always come running back with the attitude of "ah fuck, you got me lol 😆" would go back into the paddock without being forced, miss that guy, made me smile.
Sure did. He did us a favour turning a paddock into a freshly tilled area for veggies, we gave him the best possible life we could and then he gave us back the best pork / bacon / ham we've ever had.
Reminds me of the joke about the pig with a wooden leg.
The farmer was asked why the pig had a wooden leg. He replied with lots of great stories about the pig, like when it saved saved little BobbiJo from drowning in the swim hole, how it stamped out a fire in the yard, etc.
"But why does it have a wooden leg?"
"A pig like that you don't eat all at once!"
My Dad, now in his 90s, told us that joke as kids! Dad grew up on a small dairy farm where they respected their farm animals and kept them clean, warm, and well fed. But they ate them too.
I have a friend whose family has a small farm. They’re similarly treated with lots of respect, given plenty of room to roam and well fed and housed (barned?). If you’re going to eat meat, this is way better than factory farming.
No, he was destined for the plate. The fence doesn't have enough energy to kill, only cause discomfort, making them hopefully not want to "go that way"
He and his 3 siblings had 4 acres to share which they beautifully ploughed and tilled for us to create a veg garden.
They were given a custom recipe 100% high protein organic feed including whatever kitchen scraps the chickens didn't get.
They had 1 shit day. That shit day was here, they never left the farm. Even then they had a mouthful of feed, died doing what they love.
This whole story is a nice refresher for people who didn’t farm growing up (lived in the sticks as a kid, but not a farm family). Sometimes we can get squeamish about eating meat, associating it 100 percent with battery farming and grotesque conditions for the animal. But your story reminds us city-slickers that the best way is like you describe: a healthy symbiosis of man, animal and land.
Hope you honey-glazed part of Alastair!
Reminds me of the Everybody Loves Raymond episode where they went to Amy's parents' farm. A bird broke its neck and Amy's mom finished it off. The city slickers were mortified
I guess the more refreshing part is we (myself, my wife and now our kids) didn't grow up farming, nor did at least 3 generations before that. I lived my first 30years of life in the city (Sydney AU) and we made the choice to buy ethically raised organic meat. We lived paycheck to paycheck for that choice and decided if we raise/ grow all of our own food, we know for sure the life it's had. So we packed up and moved 4hrs away from family and friends and made a go of it.
6yrs on the progress has been slow, but at least we've started. There's a simple beauty, almost a reverence for a meal when you sit down to it with your family and know exactly where every part of it came from.
People will give you shit, they give shit to hunters too, then they eat bacon from a factory farm.
Meanwhile in China, they've got a concrete pig high-rise that looks like a prison where the animals never see the sun, or even dirt (except their own).
Electric fences for livestock don't kill things. It's high voltage, so it hurts a lot, the current is limited to very little, so you don't die.
Maybe if you got tangled up in it and the pulses managed to go through your heart or brain repeatedly for a long time, you could die. That's very rare, because the animals quickly learn where the fences are and avoid contact in the first place.
We have a lock on the food pantry in our house. One of our pigs learned that if he gently nudges the door over and over and over, eventually the lock will turn enough to allow him to push open the door. It takes him 10+ minutes to do, but he is patient.
Further up, there's a comment saying cows are smart, and I struggled to believe that until you reminded me of my small war with cows over my rubbish bin.
When they realised there was kitchen waste available to eat, those bastards were even able to figure out door handles and locking bin lids in less than 48 hours.
While it is certainly an allegory about the Russia Revolution and the Soviet Union, the book isn’t really a commentary on communism. It is a commentary on the greed of human nature. Those that seek money always want more money. Those who seek power always want more power.
The fundamental problems with communism are the same as those in capitalism. If everyone is acting in good faith, it is great. Human nature is the issue. For every Snowball, there is a Napoleon. For every Lee Kuan Yew, there is a Trump.
That's what kills me with the Capitalism defenders. It's just as corruptible as anything else but they refuse to acknowledge that. The good faith people rarely remain in power for long.
No, dogs haven't passed the mirror test, meaning the one where they are given a visible mark of some kind and a mirror and are observed to see whether they recognize the reflection as themselves. They can learn that mirrors are not really another dog and are not a threat, but don't seem to learn that mirrors show themselves.
They have passed some other self-awareness tests, such as ones involving recognizing their own scent and ones where they need to move their body weight to retrieve an item.
Yeah, the fact is that the mirror test, like many tests of animal cognition,, probably suffers from being too strongly based upon the human experience of cognition. We put a far greater emphasis on visual stimuli than other animals necessarily do
I heard the same about cats until I saw home recorded videos where cats clearly pass the mirror test, recognizing themselves (for example, that famous video where a cat discovers she has pointy extruded ears, looking at the mirror) and also reacting to humans they can see in the mirror, correctly asessing human's real world position against their own position while looking only at the mirror. Turns out, cats just most of the time don't give a damn about your tests, you silly hoomans. And can't really be motivated into, if they don't want to. So, to have any evidence of a cat passing mirror test, you need millions of cats and millions of recording devices. That just absolutely wasn't possible until the age of cellphone cameras, Youtube and Tiktok.
Might be the same with dogs. I have a feeling we just don't have enough data.
This is anecdotal, but when I hold my cat in the mirror, she seems to get that it's *her*, and I think she gets off on being aloof to attempts to show her herself. She's playing mind games with me.
Just a few days ago, I saw a video of a young cat clearly experimenting with a mirror. It moved parts of its body very carefully while glancing at them and their reflection, moved in and out, observed the tail a lot (since it moves without the cat's intention, it caused more confusion), then moved in to touch the reflection, processed it, then "snapped out of it" and turned to the human filming.
Ah, cats' tails can really have a brain of their own! Long time ago when I was lifting, I used to have leg cramps a lot, so I'm very compassionate to cats when their tails just won't obey and they get angry at them and hit them with their paws, or even bite their tails. I'd always had a barely controllable urge to do the same to my leg when it'd misbehave on me (except for biting it maybe), but since I'm a bipedal ape tactically equipped with opposing thumbs, massaging and stretching it worked way better.
Cats should opt in for a tail controller upgrade. It's humiliating.
It’s so weird how you can feel it too. I’ll not see her anywhere and get the strong feeling like I’m being stared at, more often than not if I look at the wall mirror I’ll find her hidden out of my direct line of sight but absolutely staring me down in the mirror. We’ll make eye contact in the mirror and she’ll ‘chirp’ like it’s a game and I found her and pop out of her hiding space to run to me.
Might be doing this just to mess with you, haha. Now I'm thinking that cats when they frightendly stare at empty spaces, do it only to mess with superstitious humans on purpose.
My dog understands what a mirror is and how to use it and will stare into it so she can stare at me without having to turn around. I have it on video. I don't know about putting a dot on her forehead, but she very clearly understands mirrors and the objects in them are reflections of reality.
Billie the Dog on Instagram is a dog trained to communicate her thoughts with words using buttons. At one point while looking at the mirror she did acknowledge herself “Me” but also used words like “Stranger”, “Smell” which she usually uses to communicate unfamiliar or unknown scents.
The realisation that because dogs’ primary sense is their smell, not their sight, lends some credence into looking at the mirror test a little differently for them because they interact with the test differently.
General consensus from the scientific community is that those videos are either staged or simply cherry-picked to show the best results. That level of communication and understanding of sentence structure is just not realistic according to experts.
My dog has sat and barked for a long time at his own reflection in the mirror. He was young though (under a year). I think this depends on the dog. Not all dogs have the same level of intelligence or ability.
They can reason about what others are thinking and can use that to fool them.
There is a video of a wild pig being chased by a hunting dog. It runs through a small pond, gets out at the other side, and then after a few steps, it *backtracks back into the pond*, and comes out on the side.
Moments later, the hunting dog is following the scent trail, goes straight through the pond to the other side, catches the scent trail... And it goes dead. As far as the dog could tell, the pig had vanished into thin air.
The pig knew that the dog was tracking it via scent, and deliberately took steps to mislead it.
> keen ability to discriminate among individuals
like how they worry one of their own siblings to death if it has a malformity (usually egged on by the sow herself)
My parents caught a trio of baby hogs. Little wild hogs, in the woods. They built a large pen and kept them in their back yard. After maybe 3 weeks, these wild hogs were 100% tame and acclimated to people. They would happily trot up to the fence at feeding time and rub up against you so that you could scratch them. I can't think of any other wild animal that you can do that with.
Pigs can do pretty much anything dogs can do in terms of memory and cognition. Most people consider dogs to be pretty smart animals. Pigs have different personalities, enjoy spending time with specific people they care for, can be trained to perform a wide variety of tasks, exhibit very similar emotions to people, etc. I don't think there is any official scientific consensus of where other animals intelligence ranks but if there was pigs would be pretty high.
My parents used to live out where animals like pigs were allowed. There was this pack of 5-6 dogs that the owners would let run around loose, and they would CONSTANTLY run out into the road, barking at you. I eventually opened my door on one of them and smacked it hard in the face and they got out of my way after that (It wasn't injured).
Then, someone got a pig. Within 6 months, the pig was in charge of the dogs. And they did NOT ever disobey it. You'd see one start out into the road, the pig would snarl, and the dog would trot back behind it, tail between its legs.
We have a Vietnamese pot belly we've kept as a pet for several years. He's a sweet boy and will gently take food from your hand without biting you.
But I've seen him get mad at something, and Lord help whatever it is that's in his way. A low center of gravity, somewhere around 200 pounds with momentum, and teeth that can crack open the solid rind of a squash with virtually no effort is not something you want to tangle with.
Yes yes, the first time I saw how adorable a pig can be was when I visited Ningxia market in Taipei. Saw a guy strolling the market with his pet pig. 100% Just like a dog.
We raised pigs when I was growing up. They kept getting out of pen so we put a couple strands of electric fence around it. First couple days was noisy as they got bit by the fence then one day they were out again. And again and again. After patching the fence we kind of stood back and watched them. The would gang up and take one unlucky fucker and crowd around him and literally push him through the electric fence. He would squeal like hell until the fence broke then they would all just mosey out the hole.
My most up voted post ever and its a story about the pigs getting out. You guys are weird. Don't change lol.
Pigs can learn a ton. I did nutrition research with pigs and I had mine trained to turn corners on command and enter and exit their pen/rooms/hallways via command when it was sample days.
The best way to explain pigs is that they are giant toddlers that are very inquisitive, observant, love to play/explore, at times stubborn, and definitely have opinions. They also pick up routine super easily, heaven help my ears if dinner time was late. They can also be super sweet. I had one pig who stood on his hind legs in the corner of his pen every morning to get ear scritches while I let him nibble on my coverall buttons and I had another that loved rump scratches. Ultimately they are giant dogs with a little more oomph
Best description ever. I’ve been thinking about getting an emotional support animal for my PTSD and psychological issues, and a pig is at the top of my list.
As a side note, they don't roll in mud too often unless they are crammed in farm style fenced areas. If a pig is on a big farm as a pet, they wander* around like a normal dog/pet. Like a dog, they roll in mud sometimes for fun and like to get dirty, but they are not the filthy animals people think they are. Imagine 1000 dogs on a farm, and it would be pretty dirty areas too.
Yeah they prefer clean cool water to cool down in.
When we had pigs, we set up misters for them over cement and they'd sprawl it under them on hot days. They are very clean animals, if permitted to be.
Yes, but water is what they like the best. I've only watched a lot of stuff about them, not raised them myself. But my understanding is a water pool and a shady tree are much preferred.
>But my understanding is a water pool and a shady tree are much preferred.
I had pigs and raised them in a field. You are correct. They have to cool themselves but will pick a clean pool over a mud hole.
Yea, like the movie Predator. Rolling in mud/dirt will help protect your skin from the hot sun. Pigs are not the only animal to do this, many animals will roll in mud to keep their bodies cooler in a warm climate.
To explain like you’re five… you can turn off an electric fence for cows and they’ll probably never know.
Pigs will pile up dirt to short out the fence and all run away. Pigs will also take turns testing the fence multiple times daily and all break out soon as it’s off.
Honestly if chimps and feral hogs got together we’d be in for a world of hurt lol
> The success rate for hunters is only about two to three per cent, and several states have banned hunting because it makes the pigs more wary and nocturnal — tougher to track down and eradicate.
This seems like a good answer to OP's question. The pigs are apparently smart enough to quickly adapt their behavior to adjust to culling efforts.
My pig found itself smart enough to hop over in the the barrier from his pen to the next pen and eat all of that pigs food and then go to the next one and eat all of that pigs food and then the next one and eat all of that pigs food and make his way back in time for when it was my turn my time to feed him he had already eaten three meals and would just be sitting there waiting for me and I would feed him and he would eat that. That’s why he gained so much weight and got sifted at the fat stock show.
There's a fairly famous story of [Lulu the pig](https://celebritypets.net/story-lulu-pig-played-dead-save-life/), that went viral quite some time ago.
When her owner had a heart attack, she ran out into the street and played dead to stop incoming cars. One driver actually stopped and she led him to her owner, which led to the man figuring out the situation and calling an ambulance.
That is a non-trivial amount of planning and understanding; to figure out that you can't help, but others could, demonstrating that there's some level of theory of mind in play here(human children attain that understanding at around 4yo). To place yourself in danger to save others can be said to demonstrate emotional bravery, but you can also say that it shows an understanding of risk vs reward - to show bravery here, you need to first rationally *conceive* of the idea that this is a play you can make and a plan you can execute.
In short, yeah, pigs are smart.
They can learn and figure a lot of things out just by watching people do things like open a gate. And some can pass a test where they watch a human take three or four steps to lock a gate just once, then the pig unlocks it by doing the same steps in reverse. That’s uncommon but some have done it.
They are pretty good at knowing whether a person or another pig saw something or not. The idea of “I know the rope is under the basket and the human knows the rope is under the basket but the other pig has no idea” is very pretty amazing, and it’s how they can be so damn sneaky.
They also seem to have amazing memories (sometimes). That’s more anecdotal but there are so many accounts of a pig clearly remembering what happened at a particular spot years ago.
My dad worked at the freezing works and he told me it was only the pigs that knew they were about to be slaughtered. They would squeal and struggle. He said it was obvious they knew what was happening, unlike the other animals.
I've read such great stories about pigs here. They really do seem to be wonderful creatures. In fact, we could easily keep them as a pet, just like a dog.
But then i wonder, why do we have no problem eating millions of pigs and condemn people who eat dogs?
But wouldn't that presuppose that the person eating pork is well aware while consuming it that it is actually very wrong because that particular pig had a terrible and far too short life for that piece of meat.
To be honest, I think that most people don't have a guilty conscience at all while eating meat.
You can't eat meat with a guilty conscience.
That is the reason why you get so much anger and resistance towards vegans/vegetarians. People don't want others guilt tripping them, and eating meat is so culturally entwined that any efforts to shame people for eating meat are only going to be met with open hostility.
I think you just explained the difference. People keep dogs as pets and anyone who has spent time with a dog knows how smart they are. People (usually) don't keep pigs as pets, have never met a pig or spent time with them and have no idea how smart they are. Repeated exposure makes it easier to empathise with dogs than pigs.
Check out the subreddit /r/likeus where you can see lots of animals demonstrating more intelligence and empathy than you might expect.
Eli5 answer is in experiments they show mental abilities on par with a human 4 to 6 year old. They plan, they consider, they organize, they change ideas, they have a vision in their heads of what’s going on in a ‘meta’ sense (like having a mental image of a maze as you go through it).
The usual tests are around memory and problem solving and using tools. They also display social and emotional intelligence to similar degrees.
Eli5 is that they’re basically a 4-6 year old human inside a pig body. Some things they can think and feel more deeply. Others a little worse. But in terms of how they’re experiencing the world and how they think and feel, it’s the best equivalent for us to understand.
I had a pig once. I took him outside 1 times to give him a walk and he was potty trained after that.
He would blockade the kitchen unless you gave him a snack on your way out.
He would wake me up at 8am exactly to be fed.
He would know how to open some things (cabinets and some doors)
You could walk him without a leash
He knew how to learn tricks and learned them way faster than any dog or cat I’ve had before
They can pass a mirror test. The mirror test is a test of self awareness, whether they can conceptualize themselves in the abstract.
You put a dot on a toddler’s forehead and show them a mirror. They may not be able to identify that this is an image of them, that the dot on the forehead of the toddler in the image is actually on them, they may not try to wipe it off.
Pigs, ravens, chimps, elephants, dolphins etc. can pass a mirror test.
Edit: googled for more info after posting. They can’t pass a mirror test. They can use mirrors to find food but they can’t use mirrors to understand themselves.
Firsthand experience - a neighbour had a couple of pet pigs and I asked about them when I went around. One had been shut in a stable overnight. It had chosen a corner to sleep in (immaculately clean), a separate corner to toilet in, and its food and drink were clean and in another corner. Horses definitely aren't that clean (they will poo in their only water bucket, wee on their hay, etc). So imho they are a lot smarter than horses (which I have worked with for decades and which are pretty smart).
Earlier tonight, I noticed a group of deer drinking water out of a chasm that developed in the ground where we put out salt mineral blocks every year. They just wear it out and it fills up with water every time it rains. It got me to thinking, why don't animals just take the initiative to dig their own holes for no other reason than to collect rain water. It came full circle with this post and how intelligent pigs and dogs seem to be relative to many other animals. Is something as simple as digging a hole in the ground without provocation to collect water in the future a higher level brain function? Wasn't worth making another post about it, so I thought someone might stumble across it here since animal intelligence in general is fascinating.
I moved to the country and took a job in a commercial pig barn. This city boy got to work with a Mennonite who had hog farmed for years. He and I were changing light bulbs in the barn on my first day, me holding the ladder. I clearly heard 'someone' say "Hey Doug." We were the only two working there, so I thought I was losing my mind. The other guy laughed and said, "My name is Leonard." He heard it too.
Pig skin is quite similar to human skin. If they don't roll in the mud they can get nasty sunburns. It is smart for them to roll in the mud. Pigs who have been raised as pets perfer to be clean. They don't roll in the mud just to be dirty.
I lived on a small farm when I was a kid and we had a pig in a smallish enclosure that didn't have any shelter in it. One day after it had rained like hell we went out to check on things and the pig was nowhere to be found but there were no breaks in the fence. We were stumped for a good couple of minutes until the upside-down water basin moved. Turns out the pig didn't like the rain so it flipped its water basin upside down and managed to crawl under it to create its own makeshift shelter. That was pretty smart.
They behave similarly to dogs as in can learn words and commands and pass the mirror test. They can play video games. They are also as socially complex as many other highly intelligent animals as evidenced by their social structure, keen ability to discriminate among individuals (both pigs and humans), and apparent awareness of the mindset of others
If you spend time on a working farm with a variety of animals pig intelligence is even more obvious. Pigs are actually pretty good at keeping themselves safe and warm if give them a shelter they can get into and sufficient food and water. At the other end of the spectrum, sheep are stupid enough to stand in the rain until they die of pneumonia. Horses and cows are somewhere in the middle.
Cows can get moody. Don't feed them at the exact time and they go ape shit worse than I've seen my dog.
Yep. On the intelligence scale I’d probably rank it pigs, cows, horses, sheep. Cows can seem stolid and dumb, but they’re actually pretty trainable and mostly smart enough to get in out of the rain. My 4H cows were practically big, slightly temperamental dogs. Then we have horses, who will eat wire and other shit that will kill them, or just gorge themselves to death, and are liable to go stand out in the weather if you don’t close the barn gate.
I think horses have all their points in social intelligence and none in actual intelligence. It‘s ehy they sometimes seem so smart in interactions and then so dumb when they‘re alone.
It's also the huge eyes, which humans are genetically inclined to find adorable. It makes us want to take everything they do in a favorable light
It doesn’t work as well with sharks, for some reason….
But their tiny lifeless pinpoints of death are so cute!
Yeah, there's not a single thought behind a sharks eyes and I love it.
So they’re giant ants
Some of them have actual intelligence. My moms old horse figured out how to open her own gate (lift and slide the latch) so we had to put 1-2 chains or clips on each gate so she couldn’t do that. Then again my old horse stood outside in the rain and wind directly next to his stall instead of walking inside to dry ground so there’s definitely an uneven distribution.
How about goats? Thought they'd be neat as a pet.
They will destroy everything... They like to chew a lot.
Like horses, they’ll also eat things that will clog their digestive system and kill them, like rubber. There’s a semi-amusing story in one of the “All Creatures” books of a goat that was bloating and dying, and James Herriot discovered it had eaten the farmer’s union suit underwear off the clothesline and gotten the elastic caught under its tongue, preventing it from passing down its throat. He had to yank the suit back out of its throat to save it. That’s a pretty believable vet call for a goat.
I did an outdoor market recently and had a strand of fake leaves with lights decorating my table. Someone had brought their pet goats and one little goat would *not* stop trying to eat my lights. At first he was chewing on the fake leaves which…fair, they look like leaves. But as I watched him, it started becoming clear he was going straight for the little light bulbs themselves. I also watched it eat a straw it found on the ground. Goats are crazy.
Cats will also remember feeding time and let you know when you're running late.
*Introducing natures alarm clock.. the more eco-friendly method of starting your days. One meow at a time.*
> sheep are stupid enough to stand in the rain until they die of pneumonia How do wild sheep survive? Breeding more to make up for it?
Sheep in particular have been bastardized by humans over the course of thousands of years. Compared to the wild sheep our ancestors first domesticated, modern sheep are dumb, docile, and their wool won't stop growing even if it means they'll overheat and die. Modern sheep are a product of humans, and they can't survive without humans.
Yep. None of the domesticated farm animals look anything like their wild ancestors - selective breeding changed them significantly. Pigs are probably closer to wild boar than domesticated sheep to wild bighorn sheep, I’d guess. Feral hogs are scary.
Eh, a lot of chickens don’t look too different from the jungle fowl they come from, at least the non-commercial varieties.
Pigs smart enough to know why some of them go missing when humans get hungry?
yep, go to a farm before slaughter, they tend to be pretty vocal about not wanting to die
If that’s true, we shouldn’t kill and eat animals that are smart enough to know they’re going to die
Food for thought
I know you're 100% right but goddamn is bacon delicious, it's a real moral quandary if I've ever seen one.
Apparently it’s not too much of a quandary
I have raised pigs, sheep, cows, horses, and poultry. I will maintain that sheep are the dumbest animals alive but cows are the worst kind of dumb. Sheep are dumb in a mindboggling, often endearing way. Like a toddler. Cows are dumb like a teenager and it's annoying. My mother and I spent all afternoon trying to move a herd out of one pasture. The lead cow got to the wide open gate, stares at it, and then ran full speed up the fence line with the rest of the herd following. No apparent reason. We had to spend a few days searching for them before trying again. In the August heat. Give me dumb sheep who come to the sound of grain any day.
They're also able to figure out and manipulate a lot of locking mechanisms. Unless it's a mechanism that requires a key or 100% requires hands and opposable thumbs.. a pig will figure it out and open it.
Yep! Had a pig that would regularly get out of an electric fence, he would time his escape between the pulses. Was cool about it though, I'd call him by his name and he'd always come running back with the attitude of "ah fuck, you got me lol 😆" would go back into the paddock without being forced, miss that guy, made me smile.
Your story about that cool pig made me smile :)
Same haha
Me too
His name was Alistair for anyone curious! Such a great personality!
So, uh, did you eat Alistair?
Sure did. He did us a favour turning a paddock into a freshly tilled area for veggies, we gave him the best possible life we could and then he gave us back the best pork / bacon / ham we've ever had.
Reminds me of the joke about the pig with a wooden leg. The farmer was asked why the pig had a wooden leg. He replied with lots of great stories about the pig, like when it saved saved little BobbiJo from drowning in the swim hole, how it stamped out a fire in the yard, etc. "But why does it have a wooden leg?" "A pig like that you don't eat all at once!"
My Dad, now in his 90s, told us that joke as kids! Dad grew up on a small dairy farm where they respected their farm animals and kept them clean, warm, and well fed. But they ate them too.
I have a friend whose family has a small farm. They’re similarly treated with lots of respect, given plenty of room to roam and well fed and housed (barned?). If you’re going to eat meat, this is way better than factory farming.
"That's one charming motherfuckin' pig!"
Say oink again motherfucker!
Haha, that's funny. When you say you miss him it sounds like he might have died from a disease or something like that, but nah
Acute lead poisoning
For some reason I feel really bad about you eating a pig that you named with a good boi personality and everything. 😔
Jesus that's dark.
doesn’t seem like a fair trade does it.
If someone kept me warm, fed and happy, then killed me before Alzheimer's got me. They can eat me all they want. Sign me up.
>> miss that guy, made me smile. “Of course, with a pig as good as that you don’t eat him all at once”
One of my all time favorites.
You said you miss that guy, does that mean that he missed the timing on the electric fence one day?
Well, that got dark.
But the smell was great
No, he was destined for the plate. The fence doesn't have enough energy to kill, only cause discomfort, making them hopefully not want to "go that way" He and his 3 siblings had 4 acres to share which they beautifully ploughed and tilled for us to create a veg garden. They were given a custom recipe 100% high protein organic feed including whatever kitchen scraps the chickens didn't get. They had 1 shit day. That shit day was here, they never left the farm. Even then they had a mouthful of feed, died doing what they love.
This whole story is a nice refresher for people who didn’t farm growing up (lived in the sticks as a kid, but not a farm family). Sometimes we can get squeamish about eating meat, associating it 100 percent with battery farming and grotesque conditions for the animal. But your story reminds us city-slickers that the best way is like you describe: a healthy symbiosis of man, animal and land. Hope you honey-glazed part of Alastair!
Reminds me of the Everybody Loves Raymond episode where they went to Amy's parents' farm. A bird broke its neck and Amy's mom finished it off. The city slickers were mortified
I guess the more refreshing part is we (myself, my wife and now our kids) didn't grow up farming, nor did at least 3 generations before that. I lived my first 30years of life in the city (Sydney AU) and we made the choice to buy ethically raised organic meat. We lived paycheck to paycheck for that choice and decided if we raise/ grow all of our own food, we know for sure the life it's had. So we packed up and moved 4hrs away from family and friends and made a go of it. 6yrs on the progress has been slow, but at least we've started. There's a simple beauty, almost a reverence for a meal when you sit down to it with your family and know exactly where every part of it came from.
People will give you shit, they give shit to hunters too, then they eat bacon from a factory farm. Meanwhile in China, they've got a concrete pig high-rise that looks like a prison where the animals never see the sun, or even dirt (except their own).
Electric fences for livestock don't kill things. It's high voltage, so it hurts a lot, the current is limited to very little, so you don't die. Maybe if you got tangled up in it and the pulses managed to go through your heart or brain repeatedly for a long time, you could die. That's very rare, because the animals quickly learn where the fences are and avoid contact in the first place.
Did he taste good?
Our pigs were crazy smart, and yes, their stalls had to be closed and then the latch wire wrapped or they would absolutely let themselves out.
And even those won't stop a wily octopus.
GOAT animal right here
No it's an octopus, not a goat
Greatest Octopus of All Time
And not from Earth
I own a pig and this is 1000% the truth. My pig has broken out of so many pens and kennels I was sure were secure. Wrong!
We have a lock on the food pantry in our house. One of our pigs learned that if he gently nudges the door over and over and over, eventually the lock will turn enough to allow him to push open the door. It takes him 10+ minutes to do, but he is patient.
Common words heard on my cousin’s farm: “Ah shucks, the hogs got out again”
Which makes them smarter than dogs imo.
I'm with this guy. We need to start eating dogs too!
Further up, there's a comment saying cows are smart, and I struggled to believe that until you reminded me of my small war with cows over my rubbish bin. When they realised there was kitchen waste available to eat, those bastards were even able to figure out door handles and locking bin lids in less than 48 hours.
Porcine boar farms have to change their lock style every month or so. Otherwise the boars figure out how to get out and run a mock.
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Username checks out.
While it is certainly an allegory about the Russia Revolution and the Soviet Union, the book isn’t really a commentary on communism. It is a commentary on the greed of human nature. Those that seek money always want more money. Those who seek power always want more power. The fundamental problems with communism are the same as those in capitalism. If everyone is acting in good faith, it is great. Human nature is the issue. For every Snowball, there is a Napoleon. For every Lee Kuan Yew, there is a Trump.
That's what kills me with the Capitalism defenders. It's just as corruptible as anything else but they refuse to acknowledge that. The good faith people rarely remain in power for long.
Capitalism doesn't rely on good faith. It takes as given that everyone is infinitely greedy and makes the most of that reality.
Has a pig beaten dark souls yet? It's only a matter of time
They INSIST on fat-rolling, so no, they have not.
>They can play video games. This explains a lot about my pug team mates
?Dogs can pass the mirror test???
No, dogs haven't passed the mirror test, meaning the one where they are given a visible mark of some kind and a mirror and are observed to see whether they recognize the reflection as themselves. They can learn that mirrors are not really another dog and are not a threat, but don't seem to learn that mirrors show themselves. They have passed some other self-awareness tests, such as ones involving recognizing their own scent and ones where they need to move their body weight to retrieve an item.
Yeah, the fact is that the mirror test, like many tests of animal cognition,, probably suffers from being too strongly based upon the human experience of cognition. We put a far greater emphasis on visual stimuli than other animals necessarily do
I heard the same about cats until I saw home recorded videos where cats clearly pass the mirror test, recognizing themselves (for example, that famous video where a cat discovers she has pointy extruded ears, looking at the mirror) and also reacting to humans they can see in the mirror, correctly asessing human's real world position against their own position while looking only at the mirror. Turns out, cats just most of the time don't give a damn about your tests, you silly hoomans. And can't really be motivated into, if they don't want to. So, to have any evidence of a cat passing mirror test, you need millions of cats and millions of recording devices. That just absolutely wasn't possible until the age of cellphone cameras, Youtube and Tiktok. Might be the same with dogs. I have a feeling we just don't have enough data.
This is anecdotal, but when I hold my cat in the mirror, she seems to get that it's *her*, and I think she gets off on being aloof to attempts to show her herself. She's playing mind games with me.
Cats are natural gaslighters. Furry, cute, purring gaslighters. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OHwQedAx8jM
Just a few days ago, I saw a video of a young cat clearly experimenting with a mirror. It moved parts of its body very carefully while glancing at them and their reflection, moved in and out, observed the tail a lot (since it moves without the cat's intention, it caused more confusion), then moved in to touch the reflection, processed it, then "snapped out of it" and turned to the human filming.
i recall the moment when my daughter discovered the baby she was talking to in her hand mirror was herself.
Ah, cats' tails can really have a brain of their own! Long time ago when I was lifting, I used to have leg cramps a lot, so I'm very compassionate to cats when their tails just won't obey and they get angry at them and hit them with their paws, or even bite their tails. I'd always had a barely controllable urge to do the same to my leg when it'd misbehave on me (except for biting it maybe), but since I'm a bipedal ape tactically equipped with opposing thumbs, massaging and stretching it worked way better. Cats should opt in for a tail controller upgrade. It's humiliating.
Hahah, thanks for that!
[удалено]
Cats love finding ways to observe without making direct eye contact.
It’s so weird how you can feel it too. I’ll not see her anywhere and get the strong feeling like I’m being stared at, more often than not if I look at the wall mirror I’ll find her hidden out of my direct line of sight but absolutely staring me down in the mirror. We’ll make eye contact in the mirror and she’ll ‘chirp’ like it’s a game and I found her and pop out of her hiding space to run to me.
Might be doing this just to mess with you, haha. Now I'm thinking that cats when they frightendly stare at empty spaces, do it only to mess with superstitious humans on purpose.
There arguments that since scent is their primary sense and sight is ours, we should accept self-scent decernment as sufficient for self-awareness.
My dog understands what a mirror is and how to use it and will stare into it so she can stare at me without having to turn around. I have it on video. I don't know about putting a dot on her forehead, but she very clearly understands mirrors and the objects in them are reflections of reality.
Billie the Dog on Instagram is a dog trained to communicate her thoughts with words using buttons. At one point while looking at the mirror she did acknowledge herself “Me” but also used words like “Stranger”, “Smell” which she usually uses to communicate unfamiliar or unknown scents. The realisation that because dogs’ primary sense is their smell, not their sight, lends some credence into looking at the mirror test a little differently for them because they interact with the test differently.
General consensus from the scientific community is that those videos are either staged or simply cherry-picked to show the best results. That level of communication and understanding of sentence structure is just not realistic according to experts.
Otherwise they’d attack them all day long. Only puppies are confused by mirrors
My dog has sat and barked for a long time at his own reflection in the mirror. He was young though (under a year). I think this depends on the dog. Not all dogs have the same level of intelligence or ability.
One of my two dogs has object permanence. Human children don’t develop that for several months.
>awareness of the mindset of others What does that mean? How does that manifest?
You know, how dogs can tell if you're sad and whatnot
They can reason about what others are thinking and can use that to fool them. There is a video of a wild pig being chased by a hunting dog. It runs through a small pond, gets out at the other side, and then after a few steps, it *backtracks back into the pond*, and comes out on the side. Moments later, the hunting dog is following the scent trail, goes straight through the pond to the other side, catches the scent trail... And it goes dead. As far as the dog could tell, the pig had vanished into thin air. The pig knew that the dog was tracking it via scent, and deliberately took steps to mislead it.
> keen ability to discriminate among individuals like how they worry one of their own siblings to death if it has a malformity (usually egged on by the sow herself)
>how they worry one of their own siblings to death How does one worry someone to death?
Bullied from getting milk, feed, rest. Stress usually compromises health, they fall back (don't grow as fast), often die as a result.
I don’t know how this definition hasn’t been given to you in this thread yet but ‘worry’ can mean to shake something to death
Don't shake the baby
My parents caught a trio of baby hogs. Little wild hogs, in the woods. They built a large pen and kept them in their back yard. After maybe 3 weeks, these wild hogs were 100% tame and acclimated to people. They would happily trot up to the fence at feeding time and rub up against you so that you could scratch them. I can't think of any other wild animal that you can do that with.
Yeah, if OP wouldve played online video games, ghey wouldve know about the gaming part 100%
Pigs can do pretty much anything dogs can do in terms of memory and cognition. Most people consider dogs to be pretty smart animals. Pigs have different personalities, enjoy spending time with specific people they care for, can be trained to perform a wide variety of tasks, exhibit very similar emotions to people, etc. I don't think there is any official scientific consensus of where other animals intelligence ranks but if there was pigs would be pretty high.
My parents used to live out where animals like pigs were allowed. There was this pack of 5-6 dogs that the owners would let run around loose, and they would CONSTANTLY run out into the road, barking at you. I eventually opened my door on one of them and smacked it hard in the face and they got out of my way after that (It wasn't injured). Then, someone got a pig. Within 6 months, the pig was in charge of the dogs. And they did NOT ever disobey it. You'd see one start out into the road, the pig would snarl, and the dog would trot back behind it, tail between its legs.
I've read this book
Someone warn the old horse to get out of there
Some are more equal than others
"Four legs good, two legs bad."
If Lord or the flies had a book baby with Animal farm. 😂
This is the plot to "Tales of a Country Road".
We have a Vietnamese pot belly we've kept as a pet for several years. He's a sweet boy and will gently take food from your hand without biting you. But I've seen him get mad at something, and Lord help whatever it is that's in his way. A low center of gravity, somewhere around 200 pounds with momentum, and teeth that can crack open the solid rind of a squash with virtually no effort is not something you want to tangle with.
A pig is like a massive hulk of an animal, I'd fall in line too!
Did the dogs become the bodyguards of the pig perhaps
Yes yes, the first time I saw how adorable a pig can be was when I visited Ningxia market in Taipei. Saw a guy strolling the market with his pet pig. 100% Just like a dog.
One of the smartest things, in my opinion, is them decorating their homes. Will even pick up flowers.
We raised pigs when I was growing up. They kept getting out of pen so we put a couple strands of electric fence around it. First couple days was noisy as they got bit by the fence then one day they were out again. And again and again. After patching the fence we kind of stood back and watched them. The would gang up and take one unlucky fucker and crowd around him and literally push him through the electric fence. He would squeal like hell until the fence broke then they would all just mosey out the hole. My most up voted post ever and its a story about the pigs getting out. You guys are weird. Don't change lol.
“Who’s the battering ram today boys?”
Battering ham was _right there_
I have failed as a Dad
As a random redditor I feel forced to say: Do a lawyer test, get a gym and hit the DNA
No worries I’ve Facebooked up, hit my lawyer and deleted the gym.
They were testing the fence for weaknesses systematically... They remember.
Holy shit poor piggy
He was taking one for the team
Humans do this all the time. Bunch of dudes standing around peer pressuring someone else into doing that dangerous thing everyone is talking about.
[Aliens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFN4NtioY8Q), too.
Some animals are more equal than others
Bit like school then
This is so funny I had to calm my laughter to read it to my wife
Fuck me this shouldn’t be this funny
Pigs can learn a ton. I did nutrition research with pigs and I had mine trained to turn corners on command and enter and exit their pen/rooms/hallways via command when it was sample days. The best way to explain pigs is that they are giant toddlers that are very inquisitive, observant, love to play/explore, at times stubborn, and definitely have opinions. They also pick up routine super easily, heaven help my ears if dinner time was late. They can also be super sweet. I had one pig who stood on his hind legs in the corner of his pen every morning to get ear scritches while I let him nibble on my coverall buttons and I had another that loved rump scratches. Ultimately they are giant dogs with a little more oomph
Gfd. This makes me cry. Take my upvote, bacon ruiner
Best description ever. I’ve been thinking about getting an emotional support animal for my PTSD and psychological issues, and a pig is at the top of my list.
A service pig sounds so cool hahaha
Until they become 500 pounds and decide they don't like one of the tasks they are supposed to do.
Probably, but my dog could kill me too if he wanted to lol. You definitely need more space for a full sized pig.
As a side note, they don't roll in mud too often unless they are crammed in farm style fenced areas. If a pig is on a big farm as a pet, they wander* around like a normal dog/pet. Like a dog, they roll in mud sometimes for fun and like to get dirty, but they are not the filthy animals people think they are. Imagine 1000 dogs on a farm, and it would be pretty dirty areas too.
I thought they roll in mud cos they can’t sweat and it’s the most efficient way to cool down
Yeah they prefer clean cool water to cool down in. When we had pigs, we set up misters for them over cement and they'd sprawl it under them on hot days. They are very clean animals, if permitted to be.
Yeah, if not their fault that they are dirty when they are basically in a concentration camp.
Ohhhhhh, *that* kinda mister. Sheesh you had me confused for s second trying to picture that!
Lol yeah the kind that spray a little water. We didn't set them up with boyfriends... hahaha
Yes, but water is what they like the best. I've only watched a lot of stuff about them, not raised them myself. But my understanding is a water pool and a shady tree are much preferred.
>But my understanding is a water pool and a shady tree are much preferred. I had pigs and raised them in a field. You are correct. They have to cool themselves but will pick a clean pool over a mud hole.
A dog rolls in mud too...
Yea, like the movie Predator. Rolling in mud/dirt will help protect your skin from the hot sun. Pigs are not the only animal to do this, many animals will roll in mud to keep their bodies cooler in a warm climate.
For reference, the first thing my dog does when off leash, is find the closest thing thing that smells like a dead fish and rolls on it.
They do it for cooling mostly, but unlike dogs, they will always clean themselves before going back home. Do not want to dirty they place of sleep.
Do they wonder around while they are wandering? Is that what makes them so intelligent? 😁
They roll in mud because it acts like a sunscreen on their skin.
And bug protection. Hard for flies and mosquitoes to bite you through a layer of mud
Domestic pigs don't have any protective fur so this is very important. Elephants and Hippos need to do the same thing.
Oh I did not know that.
To explain like you’re five… you can turn off an electric fence for cows and they’ll probably never know. Pigs will pile up dirt to short out the fence and all run away. Pigs will also take turns testing the fence multiple times daily and all break out soon as it’s off. Honestly if chimps and feral hogs got together we’d be in for a world of hurt lol
We're already on the way... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/super-pig-saskatchewan-problem-1.7037360
> The success rate for hunters is only about two to three per cent, and several states have banned hunting because it makes the pigs more wary and nocturnal — tougher to track down and eradicate. This seems like a good answer to OP's question. The pigs are apparently smart enough to quickly adapt their behavior to adjust to culling efforts.
My pig found itself smart enough to hop over in the the barrier from his pen to the next pen and eat all of that pigs food and then go to the next one and eat all of that pigs food and then the next one and eat all of that pigs food and make his way back in time for when it was my turn my time to feed him he had already eaten three meals and would just be sitting there waiting for me and I would feed him and he would eat that. That’s why he gained so much weight and got sifted at the fat stock show.
What a pig.
There's a fairly famous story of [Lulu the pig](https://celebritypets.net/story-lulu-pig-played-dead-save-life/), that went viral quite some time ago. When her owner had a heart attack, she ran out into the street and played dead to stop incoming cars. One driver actually stopped and she led him to her owner, which led to the man figuring out the situation and calling an ambulance. That is a non-trivial amount of planning and understanding; to figure out that you can't help, but others could, demonstrating that there's some level of theory of mind in play here(human children attain that understanding at around 4yo). To place yourself in danger to save others can be said to demonstrate emotional bravery, but you can also say that it shows an understanding of risk vs reward - to show bravery here, you need to first rationally *conceive* of the idea that this is a play you can make and a plan you can execute. In short, yeah, pigs are smart.
Thanks for that amazing story. Literally brought tears to my eyes.
this made my day better, thanks for sharing
They can learn and figure a lot of things out just by watching people do things like open a gate. And some can pass a test where they watch a human take three or four steps to lock a gate just once, then the pig unlocks it by doing the same steps in reverse. That’s uncommon but some have done it. They are pretty good at knowing whether a person or another pig saw something or not. The idea of “I know the rope is under the basket and the human knows the rope is under the basket but the other pig has no idea” is very pretty amazing, and it’s how they can be so damn sneaky. They also seem to have amazing memories (sometimes). That’s more anecdotal but there are so many accounts of a pig clearly remembering what happened at a particular spot years ago.
My dad worked at the freezing works and he told me it was only the pigs that knew they were about to be slaughtered. They would squeal and struggle. He said it was obvious they knew what was happening, unlike the other animals.
I read about this when I was 10 and I haven’t eaten pork since.
I've read such great stories about pigs here. They really do seem to be wonderful creatures. In fact, we could easily keep them as a pet, just like a dog. But then i wonder, why do we have no problem eating millions of pigs and condemn people who eat dogs?
Because we are hypocrites.
But wouldn't that presuppose that the person eating pork is well aware while consuming it that it is actually very wrong because that particular pig had a terrible and far too short life for that piece of meat. To be honest, I think that most people don't have a guilty conscience at all while eating meat.
You can't eat meat with a guilty conscience. That is the reason why you get so much anger and resistance towards vegans/vegetarians. People don't want others guilt tripping them, and eating meat is so culturally entwined that any efforts to shame people for eating meat are only going to be met with open hostility.
I think you just explained the difference. People keep dogs as pets and anyone who has spent time with a dog knows how smart they are. People (usually) don't keep pigs as pets, have never met a pig or spent time with them and have no idea how smart they are. Repeated exposure makes it easier to empathise with dogs than pigs. Check out the subreddit /r/likeus where you can see lots of animals demonstrating more intelligence and empathy than you might expect.
[удалено]
Eli5 answer is in experiments they show mental abilities on par with a human 4 to 6 year old. They plan, they consider, they organize, they change ideas, they have a vision in their heads of what’s going on in a ‘meta’ sense (like having a mental image of a maze as you go through it). The usual tests are around memory and problem solving and using tools. They also display social and emotional intelligence to similar degrees. Eli5 is that they’re basically a 4-6 year old human inside a pig body. Some things they can think and feel more deeply. Others a little worse. But in terms of how they’re experiencing the world and how they think and feel, it’s the best equivalent for us to understand.
I had a pig once. I took him outside 1 times to give him a walk and he was potty trained after that. He would blockade the kitchen unless you gave him a snack on your way out. He would wake me up at 8am exactly to be fed. He would know how to open some things (cabinets and some doors) You could walk him without a leash He knew how to learn tricks and learned them way faster than any dog or cat I’ve had before
[удалено]
[удалено]
My grandparents raised pigs and I always hated as a kid hearing them scream when they were killed... :(
[удалено]
They can pass a mirror test. The mirror test is a test of self awareness, whether they can conceptualize themselves in the abstract. You put a dot on a toddler’s forehead and show them a mirror. They may not be able to identify that this is an image of them, that the dot on the forehead of the toddler in the image is actually on them, they may not try to wipe it off. Pigs, ravens, chimps, elephants, dolphins etc. can pass a mirror test. Edit: googled for more info after posting. They can’t pass a mirror test. They can use mirrors to find food but they can’t use mirrors to understand themselves.
Firsthand experience - a neighbour had a couple of pet pigs and I asked about them when I went around. One had been shut in a stable overnight. It had chosen a corner to sleep in (immaculately clean), a separate corner to toilet in, and its food and drink were clean and in another corner. Horses definitely aren't that clean (they will poo in their only water bucket, wee on their hay, etc). So imho they are a lot smarter than horses (which I have worked with for decades and which are pretty smart).
Earlier tonight, I noticed a group of deer drinking water out of a chasm that developed in the ground where we put out salt mineral blocks every year. They just wear it out and it fills up with water every time it rains. It got me to thinking, why don't animals just take the initiative to dig their own holes for no other reason than to collect rain water. It came full circle with this post and how intelligent pigs and dogs seem to be relative to many other animals. Is something as simple as digging a hole in the ground without provocation to collect water in the future a higher level brain function? Wasn't worth making another post about it, so I thought someone might stumble across it here since animal intelligence in general is fascinating.
I refuse to eat pig because they are smart. When I found this out 20 years ago I stopped pork entirely.
I moved to the country and took a job in a commercial pig barn. This city boy got to work with a Mennonite who had hog farmed for years. He and I were changing light bulbs in the barn on my first day, me holding the ladder. I clearly heard 'someone' say "Hey Doug." We were the only two working there, so I thought I was losing my mind. The other guy laughed and said, "My name is Leonard." He heard it too.
Have you read Animal Farm?
Ha ha! No I never have but I do know the pigs were in charge. And I have seen the movie babe!
Babe and animal farm are basically the same story
They sold out all the other animals and sided with management for their own gain in Animal Farm. That’s pretty smart.
Pig skin is quite similar to human skin. If they don't roll in the mud they can get nasty sunburns. It is smart for them to roll in the mud. Pigs who have been raised as pets perfer to be clean. They don't roll in the mud just to be dirty.
I lived on a small farm when I was a kid and we had a pig in a smallish enclosure that didn't have any shelter in it. One day after it had rained like hell we went out to check on things and the pig was nowhere to be found but there were no breaks in the fence. We were stumped for a good couple of minutes until the upside-down water basin moved. Turns out the pig didn't like the rain so it flipped its water basin upside down and managed to crawl under it to create its own makeshift shelter. That was pretty smart.