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Studies in Social Cognition: From Primates to Pigs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

S Held ,
M Mendl ,
C Devereux  and
R W Byrne
S Held*
Affiliation:
Division of Animal Health and Husbandry, Department for Clinical Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, Langford, Bristol BS40 5DU, UK
M Mendl
Affiliation:
Division of Animal Health and Husbandry, Department for Clinical Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, Langford, Bristol BS40 5DU, UK
C Devereux
Affiliation:
Division of Animal Health and Husbandry, Department for Clinical Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, Langford, Bristol BS40 5DU, UK
R W Byrne
Affiliation:
Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, UK
*
† Contact for correspondence and requests for reprints
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Abstract

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The stressful effects that environments have on farm and laboratory animal welfare are likely to depend on how much animals understand of the behaviour and intentions of their conspecifics as well as on their understanding of their physical environment. However, studies on animal social cognition have primarily focused on primates. Here, we report on our work on social cognition in domestic pigs. It focuses on the ability of domestic pigs to assess and use to their advantage the behaviour of conspecifics, and uses approaches pioneered in studies on primates. Our work has shown that dominant pigs use the privileged knowledge of a subordinate to their own advantage in a competitive foraging situation. While such exploitative behaviour is likely to be based on rapid learning about the subordinate ‘s behaviour, it is also possible that ‘higher’ cognitive abilities such as visual perspective taking could be involved. Ongoing work uses an adaptation of the Guesser-Knower paradigm to test whether pigs are indeed capable of visual perspective taking.

Keywords

animal welfareknowledge exploitationpigssocial cognitionvisual perspective taking
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 10 , Issue S1: Consciousness, Cognition and Animal Welfare: Proceedings of the UFAW Symposium, Zoological Society of London, 11-12 May 2000 , February 2001 , pp. S209 - S217
Copyright
© 2001 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

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