Nelly and Esther - Revising our pig prejudice

The famous wartime leader Winston Churchill said, “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.” It seems he may have been right. Recent research published on the UCLA e-scholarship website has revealed that pigs share traits with many other animals that we consider to be intelligent, such as chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants.

Skilled swine

Rejecting negative perceptions of pigs as lazy, dirty and greedy, the researchers found that they are intuitive and good at learning from each other in groups. They also revealed that pigs can recognise symbols, calculate basic numbers and rapidly recall important memories. Around 9,000 years ago farmers began to domesticate pigs by capturing wild boars and breeding them to eliminate their more aggressive characteristics. Wild pigs and boars are also highly intelligent animals: so much so that the Visayan Warty Pig, a breed of wild pig from the Philippines, has been observed using pieces of tree bark gripped in its jaws as a tool to scoop out soil in preparation for nest-making.

Clever Nelly

Pigs are considered to be the fourth most intelligent animal in the world and their brainpower is believed to be even greater than that of dogs. Recently ‘Nelly the Clever Pig’ won fame in America as a performing pig, executing complex tricks on stage in return for food rewards. When a Professor of Animal Behaviour went to visit Nelly as part of a TV documentary, the doctor was keen to assess how much her behaviour was influenced by her human owner. One of the doctor’s experiments was to place a bell and a glass on the floor and ask Nelly to decide which of the two items, when moved, would earn a reward. The film shows Nelly initially shoving the bell with her snout. When that doesn’t produce a reward, she pushes the glass. After receiving a treat, clever Nelly returns to the glass again and again, earning multiple rewards and demonstrating the astonishing speed at which she can learn without human intervention.

Pigs as pets

Having a pig as a pet in the UK is considerably more complicated than looking after a dog or a cat: you are required to register as a pig keeper and you’ll also need a licence to walk your pig along public streets. A decade or so ago ‘Micropigs’ were the go-to pet for pig lovers, but far from living up to their name, most of these animals went on to grow to normal size. A good example is online swine star Esther the Wonder Pig, whose Canadian owners were told she would grow no bigger than 32kg (she now weighs 295 kg, or 46 stone). Pet owners like Derek and Steve from Ontario, who look after Esther the Wonder Pig, are very clear about why they have chosen their unusual housemate: “All pigs are loving, intelligent and compassionate animals and they deserve better than the brutal life they are born into.” That’s a statement we’ll all need to consider carefully now science is teaching us more about these fascinating animals.