Pigs are highly intelligent animals whose welfare benefits from environmental complexity and cognitive enrichment that challenges and engages their active minds.
Pigs in barren environments lack cognitive and physical stimulation, leading to boredom, frustration, and redirected behaviours including tail biting and aggression. Environmental complexity including rooting substrate, novel objects, and problem-solving feeders engages pigs cognitively and physically. Welfare science increasingly recognises positive welfare indicators in pigs — play behaviour, exploration, and positive affect — as meaningful goals beyond the absence of negative states. Meeting pigs' cognitive needs is both a welfare imperative and a practical means of reducing costly behavioural problems.