Pigs are among the most cognitively sophisticated animals on earth, and understanding their intelligence has profound implications for how we evaluate and improve their welfare in farming.
Understanding pig intelligence reframes farm animal welfare in important ways. An animal that can use tools, recognise itself in a mirror, share others' emotions, and become optimistic or pessimistic based on its environment is not simply a biological machine producing protein. When we confine a pig in a barren stall with no enrichment, we are confining a cognitively complex being to an environment that cannot begin to engage its capabilities. The ethical implications of this gap between what pigs are capable of experiencing and what conventional production systems allow them to experience are profound. Improving pig welfare is partly a practical question and partly a philosophical one about what we owe to intelligent animals we have domesticated.