Scientific understanding of pig cognition has advanced significantly, with implications for how enrichment and management should be designed to meet their intellectual needs.
Pig cognition research has transformed understanding of what these animals need to thrive. Intelligence creates vulnerability as well as potential - intelligent animals in barren environments experience greater boredom, frustration and psychological suffering than less cognitively complex species in equivalent conditions. Enrichment for pigs must engage foraging drive, social intelligence and manipulative curiosity. The most welfare-compromised pigs show cognitive pessimism - interpreting ambiguous stimuli negatively - an objective measure of poor emotional state that enrichment and improved management can reverse.