Pig Facts

Surprisingly smart facts about pigs — intelligent, clean, and completely misunderstood.

Domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) were domesticated from wild boar approximately 9,000 years ago independently in both the Near East and China — an early example of convergent domestication of the same ancestral species. Pig intelligence is significantly higher than their popular image suggests: studies at Pennsylvania State University found that pigs can learn to operate joystick-controlled video game cursors and pass tasks previously considered restricted to primates. Pigs have a similar number of olfactory receptor genes as dogs and are used for truffle-hunting in France and Italy due to their acute sense of smell. Their physiological similarity to humans makes them valuable in medical research, and porcine heart valves have been used in human cardiac surgery since the 1960s.

Pigs are highly social animals that communicate through a repertoire of over 20 distinct vocalisations. Research has documented that pigs can learn their own name within two weeks of birth and respond preferentially to it when called by their caretaker.