Porknite, anyone? Smart pigs can play video games
Posted on February 11th, 2021

Courtesy The Times (UK)

Scientists in Indiana found that pigs could use a joystick and link their actions to a game of Pong

I am fond of pigs,” Winston Churchill once said. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

Maybe they are right to do so. A new study has discovered another intellectual skill the animals can master: playing video games.

Scientists said the ability of four pigs — called Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory — to play a basic game similar to the classic Pong revealed cognitive skills not before seen in swine.

Ebony the micro pig puts her best trotter first

Ebony the micro pig puts her best trotter first

Dr Candace Croney, from Purdue University in Indiana, said the project had changed her view of the animals. When I started this study, I didn’t know much about pigs and what I did know was negative,” she said. I thought that, frankly, they were dumb and dirty animals.”

The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, involved training the pigs on apparatus normally used to test the intellect of monkeys. They had to move a joystick to direct a cursor on a screen to hit a wall.

What it’s testing is whether an animal can make a connection between the joystick and what it is doing — poised in space and time on a computer screen,” said Croney. Nothing in their natural world prepared them for this.”

Yet they could do it — and Ivory was the star pupil. He was the pig you could count on to get any task done quickly, and done well,” said Croney. He had around an 80 per cent success rate. It was not all about results, though. Omelette was slower, but worked hard and was really sensitive.”

Croney and her colleagues quickly realised that the comparison with monkeys’ skills was unfair — not because they were cleverer, but because monkeys do not have trotters. Without opposable thumbs, they had to move the joystick with their snouts — which meant they could not watch the screen and operate the game at the same time.

Dr Candace Croney with Omlette, the poorest porcine gamer

Dr Candace Croney with Omlette, the poorest porcine gamer

Worse, with a snout designed for rooting, side-to-side motions were hard. If the wall” was on the left or right of the screen, their success rate dropped, and they had to iterate by tacking up and down.

Croney confesses she did not always maintain a strict scientific detachment. In particular, she noted that human contact worked better than treats to motivate the animals. One of the biggest motivators were belly scratches. If they were frustrated, we would give them a break and they would flop over and we would scratch them. Then they would go back to the task.”

Croney says the findings show that we should take the intellectual needs of pigs far more seriously when considering their welfare. Afterwards, all except Omelette, who died, were rehomed — and Croney kept in touch.

Hamlet lived out his years on a farm. When I went back to visit him, he not only recognised me, he barked, raced towards me, sat and then rolled over so I could scratch his belly.”

Animal kingdom’s cleverest

Crows Researchers at the University of Washington captured crows while wearing a caveman mask. Later the crows attacked anyone in the mask.

Dolphins In Mississippi’s Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, scientists trained dolphins to clear rubbish out of a pool by giving them a fish when they collected some litter.

Chimpanzees Santino the chimp, who lived in a Swedish zoo, built up a stash of rocks at night so he could throw them at visitors the next day.

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