They are one of the intelligent animals in the farmyard. We share this planet with one billion pigs. They are one of the most widespread animals on the planet. Pigs and humans have had a relationship for many years along the line of “you feed me and I’ll feed you!” It allows pigs to flourish as the number one meat producing animal on the planet. What is so amazing about pigs?

• Intelligence – A pig’s brain has powerful sensory functions, problem-solving skills and emotions which are a miniature version of our own brains. Pigs can perform simple video games for meals. Chimps and dogs can do this also but not as quick as pigs. Dogs need coaching. Pigs have been trained to do tricks, much like dogs. They are very quick learners and can find new ways to accomplish a task.
• Foragers for food – Unlike many other domesticated animals, pigs are hardwired to be foragers for food. They explore the world in their relentless search for food. This means pigs have developed an ability for abstract thinking. They can access new situations and come up with solutions. This is a powerful skill set.
• Adaptability – We know pigs as being domesticated or wild. There are wild boars but also wild domesticated pigs which have escaped from captivity. These “feral” pigs show the adaptability of pigs. They can grow long course hair, change their skull shape and become like a wild boar. If caught in time it will revert back. A pig goes wilder quicker than any other animal on the planet. It is these escaped pigs that can turn into large pigs known as “Hogzillas”.
• Competiveness – As soon as a pig is born it is on a race to make it big. As soon as a baby is born it can see, hear and walk. It is on it’s own to free itself from the umbilical cord and find it’s mother’s teat. The babies have to establish a teat order but once settled then they stick with their selected teat. They are born with needle sharp to help with this teat order fighting. No other mammal is born with teeth that can injure their kin. This keeps order in the pen. The mother delivers her milk once an hour in a fifteen to twenty second burst. No other mammal does it this way. This high power meal means that it grows at a phenomenal rate. In six months it puts on weight at the equivalent of a human child born at eight pounds putting on eight hundred pounds!
• Snout – The snout of the pig is an amazing tool. It is part sniffer, shovel and finger tip. It is cartilage with a sensory tip with muscles that makes the pig into a living bulldozer. They can move concrete, uproot small trees and yet pick up delicate objects. They can smell as good as a bloodhound. They can smell food under the ground or predators about a mile away.
• They are humans body double – It may not look like it from the outside but surgeons know that a pig’s vital organs are very similar to humans. Every day ten thousand people die from heart attacks. A million operations a year use pig hearts to save humans. Pigs are used to study exercise and heart disease. We have approximately the same torso with similar ribs, heart, lungs and liver. Drugs are tested on pigs before using on humans. Pigs donate skin to burn victims, corneas cells to damaged eyes, pancreatic cells to diabetics and brain cells to Parkinson victims. Pigs resemble humans more than we realise.
• Emotional lives – The most stressful part of a farm animals life is weaning. Pigs and humans are both severely affected by traumatic events early in life. When a pig is removed early from a nursing mother it undergoes changes in its brain. Young pigs will become stressed and fight with each other until they collapse with exhaustion. A traumatised brain will panic when facing a crisis. A fully weaned pig is confident and a low level of fear. Stress can cripple a young intelligent brain of both pigs and humans.

Pigs may actually be man’s best animal friend. One billion of pigs on the planet are proof that pigs are here to stay whether in captivity or in the wild. We must take care of the animals that take care of us.

Categories: Animals