{"id":111556,"date":"2021-02-11T17:18:45","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T00:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=111556"},"modified":"2021-02-11T17:18:45","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T00:18:45","slug":"porknite-anyone-smart-pigs-can-play-video-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/11\/porknite-anyone-smart-pigs-can-play-video-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Porknite, anyone? Smart pigs can play video games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Times (UK)<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"Scientists<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am fond of pigs,\u201d Winston Churchill once said. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Scientists said the ability of four pigs \u2014 called Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory \u2014 to play a basic game similar to the classic Pong <\/em>revealed cognitive skills not before seen in swine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ebony<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ebony the micro pig puts her best trotter first<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t know much about pigs and what I did know was negative,\u201d she said. I thought that, frankly, they were dumb and dirty animals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it\u2019s testing is whether an animal can make a connection between the joystick and what it is doing \u2014 poised in space and time on a computer screen,\u201d said Croney. Nothing in their natural world prepared them for this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet they could do it \u2014 and Ivory was the star pupil. He was the pig you could count on to get any task done quickly, and done well,\u201d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Croney and her colleagues quickly realised that the comparison with monkeys\u2019 skills was unfair \u2014 not because they were cleverer, but because monkeys do not have trotters. Without opposable thumbs, they had to move the joystick with their snouts \u2014 which meant they could not watch the screen and operate the game at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dr<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dr Candace Croney with Omlette, the poorest porcine gamer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, with a snout designed for rooting, side-to-side motions were hard. If the wall\u201d was on the left or right of the screen, their success rate dropped, and they had to iterate by tacking up and down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 and Croney kept in touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Animal kingdom\u2019s cleverest<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crows <\/strong>Researchers at the University of Washington captured crows while wearing a caveman mask. Later the crows attacked anyone in the mask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dolphins<\/strong> In Mississippi\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chimpanzees <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Times (UK) I am fond of pigs,\u201d Winston Churchill once said. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}