Pigs are among the most cognitively complex farm animals, and understanding their intelligence is essential for appreciating the welfare cost of barren, unstimulating intensive housing environments.
The cognitive complexity of pigs makes their confinement in barren, unstimulating environments a welfare harm of greater depth than simple physical discomfort. Boredom, frustration, and inability to engage investigative and social cognitive drives cause psychological suffering in animals capable of sophisticated thought. Pigs given complex enrichment environments and problem-solving opportunities show positive emotional states and reduced stress indicators. The mismatch between pig cognition and the environments typical intensive farming provides them is a fundamental ethical problem.