Pigs Are Smart, Emotional, Complex
May 6, 2025 at 1:36 pm
According to a paper published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, the International Journal of Comparative Psychology, pigs perform as well or better than dogs on some tests of behavioral and cognitive sophistication, and they compare favorably to chimpanzees, our closest human relatives, in addition to other primates.The article reviews pigs’ full range of abilities by detailing dozens of studies and extrapolating from those results to determine what we do and do not know about pigs. The areas examined by the article include cognition, emotion, self-awareness, personality and social complexity.
Scientists have concluded that “pigs possess complex ethological traits similar … to dogs and chimpanzees.” For example, pigs:
- have excellent long-term memories;
- are whizzes with mazes and other tests requiring location of desired objects;
- can comprehend a simple symbolic language and can learn complex combinations of symbols for actions and objects;
- love to play and engage in mock fighting with each other, similar to play in dogs and other mammals;
- live in complex social communities where they keep track of individuals and learn from one another;
- cooperate with one another and show signs of Machiavellian intelligence such as perspective-taking and tactical deception;
- can manipulate a joystick to move an on-screen cursor, a capacity they share with chimpanzees;
- can use a mirror to find hidden food;
- exhibit a form of empathy when witnessing the same emotion in another individual.
Scientists have shown that pigs share a number of cognitive capacities with other highly intelligent species such as dogs, chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, and even humans.