Clever gamer pigs need us to save their bacon

Pigs can play video games, scientists have found
Daniel Hambury
Melanie McDonagh12 February 2021
WEST END FINAL

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Congratulations to Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory, the pigs that have established that they can play video games. Ivory was especially impressive, with an 80 per cent success rate. Omelette achieved significant improvements through hard work.

These are the findings of scientists from Purdue University in Indiana who wanted to see whether pigs could move a joystick to direct a cursor on a screen to hit a wall. They did; the pigs gave laboratory monkeys a run for their money, using trotters.

The news gave me pause over my breakfast bacon. I knew that pigs are intelligent. My friend Miranda has a farm where hairy pigs roam free over the Suffolk fields and the teenage pigs show a pronounced willingness to play — a group of them chased my daughter round their pen practically laughing their little snouts off. But these creatures live in pig nirvana. They end up as delicious joints of pork — I mean, that’s why they are there — but before that, they get the chance to do piggy things ... snuffle round the fields, chase each other, roll in the mud.

If pigs can end up as delinquents playing computer games then it should make us that bit more conscious of the necessity of treating them not as industrial farm products, but creatures with their own needs; for space, company and decent conditions. But it’s not what they get in intensive farms.

Waitrose is introducing an interesting app in 1,800 farms developed by Professor Francoise Wemelsfelder at Scotland’s Rural College to monitor the emotional wellbeing of hens, who are, frankly, way less interesting than pigs. It notes “key behavioural expressions” to help monitor welfare.

It’s hoped that the app will be introduced for cattle and pigs eventually. On small-scale farms you shouldn’t need an app but this kind of technology can only help improve animal life on big farms.

It’s not enough to improve standards in a few farms; in any future international trade deal involving pork, we should insist the pigs involved were humanely reared. Omelette and Ivory deserve nothing less.

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