The four pigs came to win. If they played the game well, they got delicious dog food (they used to get M&M, but people decided they were too sweet). Countless times when researchers have asked to complete a video game task – guiding a cursor with a joystick, a kind of rudimentary Pong– they did it with impressive skill.
Researchers have begun putting pigs on computerized tasks in the late 1990s and, although the results occasionally had a press over the years, no research was carried out published until today, with paper in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Scientists found that, despite dexterous and visual constraints on animals, pigs were able to understand and realize objectives simply Computer games.
“What they’ve been able to do is far outweigh the chances of achieving these goals,” Candace Croney, director of the Center for Animal Welfare at Purdue University and lead author, said in a phone call. “And much more than the chance that it’s very clear that they had some conceptual understanding of what they were being asked to do.”
The published research is the long-awaited fruit of about 20 years of work, which began when Croney was at Purdue University in collaboration with prolific researcher Stanley Curtis. The project followed the efforts of two Yorkshire pigs, Hamlet and Omlet, and two Panepinto micro pigs, Ebony and Ivory, as they tried to move a cursor to a lighted area on the computer screen.
G / O Media may receive a commission
“He’s praying to play video games,” Curtis said said AP in 1997. “They beg to be the first to come out of the pens, then climb the ramp to play.”
It was an uphill battle for the pigs. The joysticks were equipped for primate testing, so the hoofed pigs had to use their snouts and mouths to do the job. It was found that all four pigs were farsighted, so the screens had to be placed at an optimal distance for the pigs to see the targets. There were additional limitations on Yorkshire pigs. Raised to grow fast, heavier pigs could not stand for too long.
“Although there may be some physical limitations in how well the pigs could see the screen or manipulate the joystick, they clearly understood the connection between their own behavior, the joystick, and what was happening on the screen,” Lori Marino , a neurologist not affiliated with the current newspaper, said in an email. Marino, who leads the Whale Sanctuary Project, has long studied the knowledge, intelligence and self-awareness of mammals, including pigs. “It’s really proof of the flexibility and cognitive ingenuity that they’ve been able to find ways to manipulate the joystick, despite the fact that setting up the test has often been difficult for them to physically engage with.”
“What makes these findings even more important is that the pigs in this study showed self-agency,” Marino added, “which is the ability to recognize that their own actions make a difference.”
Pigs have been taught a series of commands to make their lives easier, as well as those of researchers. They learned instructions similar to what you would teach a dog – to sit, to come, to wait away from their pens when they need cleaning – as well as to bring their toys when the video game work was finished.
“At one point, they were very good at making toys and they weren’t so good at cleaning themselves,” Croney said. “I became quite a pig caretaker, walking around and sorting them. So we started teaching them to put things back together. ”
When the research was completed, Yorkshire pigs were adopted by the owners of a pension, where they lived their lives on the farm. Ebony and Ivory He eventually retired to a children’s zoo. -Roney said that even years after the experiments, he went to visit Hamlet, who heard his voice and “came galloping” on the pasture to greet him.
Pigs may not have the right fingers of a primate or the pathetic appearance of a dog, but, cognitively, they are in fierce competition. Winston Churchill once said, “Dogs look at you, cats look at you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you like an equal. ” It took a long time to give the pigs the respect they deserve.