Pigs have cognitive abilities comparable to dogs and young children - understanding this has profound implications for how we treat them.
The cognitive complexity of pigs creates an ethical paradox of considerable weight. These are animals with intelligence, emotional lives, individual personalities and social bonds comparable to companion animals that most people would never farm intensively. The welfare implications are direct: boredom in barren environments causes cognitive suffering, social disruption causes stress comparable to that experienced by highly social animals, and physical restriction prevents the exploration and problem-solving that cognitively complex animals require. Understanding pig intelligence is not merely academically interesting - it is a call to reconsider the welfare standards applied to animals clearly capable of rich subjective experience.