New York, N.Y. – According to a new white paper released today by Farm Sanctuary’s The Someone Project, pigs prepare for the future, perform as well or better than dogs on some tests of behavioral and cognitive sophistication, and compare favorably to dogs and chimpanzees, a beloved companion animal species and humans’ closest genetic relatives, on many other tasks.
The paper, Thinking Pigs: Cognition, Emotion, and Personality – An Exploration of the Cognitive Complexity of Sus Domesticus, The Domestic Pig, written by neuroscientist Dr. Lori Marino and Emory University Prof. Christina M. Colvin, 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.
With intriguing examples based on a review of the complete scientific literature to date, Dr. Marino and Prof. Colvin conclude that “pigs are not very different from the dogs and cats we share our homes with. They may even be not very different from ourselves.”