Pigs are incredibly fascinating and intelligent beings. They are social and emotional with unique personalities, feelings, and the ability to think critically. When given the opportunity, pigs develop strong friendships and familial bonds and live rich lives full of foraging, playing, and enjoying shared experiences. Naturally, pigs live on average 15 to 20 years.

Studies have consistently shown that pigs have such a high level of intelligence that they are actually smarter than dogs and 3 year old human children. Some experiments, like one conducted at Penn State, demonstrated a pig’s ability to manipulate a joystick with their snout to play a video game. This behavior had previously only ever been demonstrated by chimpanzees, the closest living relative to modern day humans.

Pigs are excellent at navigating mazes, completing puzzles, and have the ability to modify plans when presented with new information. Recent groundbreaking research has documented the use of tools by pigs – a behavior that is found only amongst the most intelligent living beings on earth like dolphins, gorillas and humans.

Pigs are incredibly social, and they form hierarchical groups consisting of family and friends. Mother pigs are incredibly nurturing, and they spend a great deal of time selecting the perfect location for their nests, which they then fill with soft grasses and flowers to make them comfortable and elaborate. Within a group, mother pigs will take turns caring for the young, even if they are not their own. Pigs can mirror each other’s emotions and have many different vocalizations they use to communicate.

Pigs are also very loyal to each other as well as their human companions. Many instances of pigs saving the lives of humans, and protecting and fighting for other pigs in their social group, have been documented. It is clear that pigs are smart but also emotionally intelligent. They can experience joy and love as well as fear and sadness, just as we do.

Pigs that are raised in the animal agricultural industry, however, do not get to experience the joys of foraging, creating friendships, or raising their young. Instead, they are subjected to inhumane treatment and stressful environments, ending with their lives being cut extremely short. Each year, over 1 billion pigs are slaughtered worldwide.

Pigs Raised for Meat

Pigs raised within the animal agricultural industry experience horrifying living conditions that cause mental, emotional and physical damage to those individuals. Sows (female pigs) that are used for breeding are often kept in huge facilities termed megafarms. These pigs are artificially inseminated in a degrading and harmful process, and then spend their 4-month gestation period confined, usually in something called a gestation crate. Gestation crates are typically 2 foot by 6 foot cages that do not even allow the mother to turn around, only stand up or lay down.

When they are ready to give birth, mothers are moved to farrowing quarters where they are again confined in a similar cage. Once the mother pig gives birth, often to more than a dozen piglets, the farrowing cage restricts her ability to nurture and care for her young as she would naturally.

Due to her physical restrictions, the runts of the litter are unable to nurse and are culled within 24 hours by handlers in a practice dubbed thumping. The runts are grabbed by their ankles and their heads are thumped against the concrete floor. The remaining piglets face other risks, even being crushed by their own mother due to her inability to do anything but stand or lay down. When mother pigs are considered spent and start experiencing reproductive issues, they are sent to slaughter or otherwise discarded.

Piglets that will be raised for meat are loaded onto trucks and transported to fattening facilities. These trips are often extremely long and arduous. There are no restrictions limiting the length of the transport, the temperature, or if the pigs receive breaks, water or food. Many succumb to the heat or cold during these trips, as was nearly the case for our own piglets Elsa and Anna. Over 1 million pigs die in transport annually in the United States alone.

Once the survivors reach the fattening facility, they are packed into unnatural concrete paddocks with slatted floors that allow their waste to drop through, but they are painful and damaging to pigs’ hooves. Pigs undergo a series of painful procedures, such as having their tusks trimmed to the nerve bed, their tails docked, and castration. These are all done without anesthetic and are intended to “protect” the other pigs in this stressful environment. These are also breeding grounds for infection and sometimes facilities are overwhelmed with mass illnesses like swine flu, resulting in the immediate termination of all the individuals in the facility.

Pigs in these situations, from gestation crate to fattening facility, have been known to go mad and develop neurotic behaviors due to the stress experienced at their level of intelligence. Finally, after just a few months of fattening, pigs are sent to slaughter. This is usually around 4-6 months of age, barely a fraction of their natural life expectancy. Although pigs are protected by The Humane Slaughter Act, or the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act (P.L. 85-765; 7 U.S.C. 1901 et seq.), which states that they must be “rendered insensible to pain” prior to slaughter, investigations have discovered that this is not the case in many instances.

Protecting Lives

Making the decision and effort to eliminate pig and animal products from your diet is the best way to protect these intelligent animals, like our own residents Little Dude, Penny and June. By choosing alternatives, you are making a difference and giving the opportunity for a unique individual to live their life unencumbered by human interference.

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