{"id":3087,"date":"2013-08-11T17:54:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-11T17:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farmforward1.wpengine.com\/?p=3087"},"modified":"2022-11-09T18:10:48","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T18:10:48","slug":"lassie-vs-babe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/lassie-vs-babe\/","title":{"rendered":"Lassie vs Babe"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<section class=\"normal_content bg-white padding-top-small padding-bottom-large\" style=\"\">\n\t\t<div class=\"container\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"row center-md\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-7\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"content-styled\"><p>For good reasons, some people keep pigs as pets: When given the chance, pigs are capable of relating to human guardians with the same degree of loyalty, playfulness, and regard as any dog. In a natural, nonthreatening environment, pigs can learn and respond to their own names and be trained to do just about anything a dog can do. The producers of the movie\u00a0<em>Babe\u00a0<\/em>(where a pig learns to herd sheep) didn\u2019t have to use CGI\u2014they just taught the pigs how to do their own stunts.<\/p>\n<p>Even studies funded by the agribusiness industry have shown that pigs are highly intelligent animals. Stanley Curtis, who is an industrial animal scientist at Penn State University, trained pigs to play a video game using their snouts to manipulate a joystick. Despite the physical difficulties of the task, the pigs were able to learn the game faster even than chimpanzees.<a class='endnote' href='#endnote1'>1<\/a> Pigs have been observed not only figuring out how to open gates to escape from a pasture, but also working together in pairs to accomplish this task.<a class='endnote' href='#endnote2'>2<\/a> One study showed that pigs can adjust thermostats to keep the temperature to their liking.<a class='endnote' href='#endnote3'>3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps more striking even than these abilities themselves are the vast differences in behavior between pigs on factory farms and those who are raised in a more natural environment. Pigs who are not subjected to intensive confinement exhibit a complex level of social interaction that includes using body language to indicate when apparently aggressive gestures are instead part of a game,<a class='endnote' href='#endnote4'>4<\/a> and using different grunts and calls to signify when it\u2019s time to suckle and when they have become separated from their babies.<a class='endnote' href='#endnote5'>5<\/a><\/p>\n<p>When they are happy and have room to do so, pigs will bound, roll on their backs, and play chase\u2014but the vast majority of pigs raised for food nowadays are kept in such cramped conditions that they cannot turn around, and barely have room to move. Anyone keeping a dog, or thousands of dogs, in similar conditions would be charged with animal abuse. It is time\u2014decades ago, it was time\u2014to end the factory farming of pigs.<\/p>\n<p>Sign up\u00a0for the Farm Forward newsletter to receive updates and important information about how you can get involved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How we view dogs and pigs is vastly different, but are they really so different after all? Learn more here.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-welfare"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}