Pig Facts 7

•  5. Pig Are Intelligent, Emotional Creatures
• Pigs gather near a gap in the slats of their pens
• Pigs have demonstrated that they care about one another's well-being. chadin0/Shutterstock
• A review of pig studies published in the International Journal of Comparative Psychology suggests pigs have a complex psychology that we're only now beginning to understand. "Pigs display consistent behavioral and emotional characteristics that have been described variously as personality. e.g., coping styles, response types, temperament, and behavioral tendencies," the authors wrote.
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• The review also found that pigs respond to each other's emotions. "Emotional contagion in pigs involve[s] responses to other pigs' anticipation of positive or negative events, revealing the importance of social factors in emotion." Cognitive tests have shown them to be smarter than dogs.
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• 6. They Even Use Tools
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• Ecologist Meredith Root-Bernstein was studying some special pigs in France when she noticed a behavior that had never been noted before. Visayan warty pigs were using sticks and bark scraps to build nests. (You can see video of the behavior in the clip above.) These specific pigs are endangered, which is why she was studying them in a zoo environment, but the unprompted behavior counts, according to Root-Bertstein. The nest building doesn't happen all the time, only every six months or so when the pigs are expecting the arrival of piglets.
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• 7. Pigs Don't Really Sweat
• A pig stands in a mud puddle, dripping mud
• Since they can't sweat very well, pigs need other ways to cool off. jadimages/Shutterstock
• We use the phrase, "sweating like a pig," but the truth is pigs don't sweat a lot. Sweat is a way warm-blooded animals keep cool, but they need functional sweat glands to do that. Pigs have the glands, but they don't work well. This is why pigs will roll around in mud to keep cool.
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• 8. Pigs Have Crummy Vision but a Great Sense of Smell
• Pigs can see things along the sides of their head—useful for spotting food, other pigs, and potential predators—but they're not great at seeing what's right in front of them. They make up for this poor frontal vision with an excellent sniffer. They can use their snouts to detect food, and thanks to a little extra muscle that gives it flexibility, the snout also can root out food.
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• 9. Pigs Communicate With Each Other
• Piglets learn to recognize their mother's voice and answer her call. She in turn will "sing" to her babies while nursing them. Pigs are said to have more than 20 distinct grunts and squeals that all mean different things, from expressing hunger to seeking a mate.
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• 10. Pigs Have an Excellent Internal Compass
• Pigs are surprisingly good at navigation and have been known to find their way home over long distances. They can trot quickly when they need to, hitting speeds of up to 11 miles per hour. Research suggests that boars and warthogs may be able to detect north and south using a built-in magnetic compass, similar to homing pigeons and salmon, and researchers suspect that domesticated pigs likely have the same sense.