Pigs Can Play Video Games, Researchers Find
Scientists discover that pigs can use their snouts to control a joystick and successfully play a video game, in a display of the animal’s “remarkable behavioral and mental flexibility”.
Credit: Eston Martz at Pennsylvania State University
Scientists have discovered that pigs can be taught to play and understand video games, in a major study that reaffirms the intelligence and cognition of the species.
Four pigs were involved in the peer-reviewed study, where the animals were trained to use their snouts to control a joystick. Then, the pigs were taught to manipulate the joystick so that they could move a cursor toward up to four target walls shown on a computer monitor in front of them.
Incredibly, all four pigs were successful in their computer task.
“That the pigs achieved the level of success they did on a task that was significantly outside their normal frame of reference is in itself remarkable, and indicative of their behavioral and cognitive flexibility” the study found.
The results were particularly surprising, as the pigs have limited dexterity in such intelligence tasks which are usually conducted with primates who have opposable thumbs.
Credit: Dr. Candace Croney
And it wasn’t just food that kept the pigs motivated to succeed in the video game: researchers noted that the pigs continued to play the game if only rewarded with social contact.
The pigs were found to have made a social bond with the experimenter, who was also their primary caregiver, and so verbal and tactile reinforcement was a reward enough for the pigs to continue. This emotional bond was shown again when the pigs struggled at more challenging tasks - researchers noted that the only thing that encouraged the pigs to resume the difficult training was verbal encouragement from the experimenter.
The pioneering research not only shows how intelligent pigs are, but also points to how attached they can become to humans and their accompanying social interactions.
“That pigs can do this to any degree should give us pause as to what else they are capable of learning and how such learning may impact them,” said lead author Dr. Candace Croney, a professor at Purdue University and director of the Purdue Center for Animal Welfare Science.
Other studies have shown that pigs are capable of learning basic obedience commands like “come” and “sit”, but the pig’s aptitude for gaming is particularly striking in its comparison to other animals: a Jack Russell terrier in a similar study was found to struggle to master the joystick game after a year of training.
Studies like this are key in helping to rethink and recognise what sentient animals go through and experience when raised on farms.Pork, the world’s most consumed protein, is responsible for the slaughter of around 121 million pigs each year. But now more and more consumers are choosing pig-free pork products for animal welfare, environmental, or health reasons. Brands like Omnipork and Beyond Pork are leading the way, and TIME Magazine even awarded Impossible Pork as one of the best inventions of 2020.
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