Pigs learned to play video games — with a joystick

Scientists handed a pig a joystick, and the pig played.

The work began decades ago at an American agricultural university, where researchers wanted to know how much a pig could really understand. They modified an arcade-style setup: snout on the joystick, cursor on the screen, hit the coloured wall, earn a treat. Four pigs took part in the study eventually published in 2021 — two Yorkshires and two miniature pigs.

They weren't fast. Pigs are famously long-sighted-challenged up close, and a snout is a blunt instrument for steering. But they scored far above chance, which means they grasped something genuinely abstract: that moving this thing here changes that thing over there. Several kept trying even when the food dispenser failed, working on for the experimenter's voice alone.

That last detail is the one worth carrying home.

A pig in a bare pen isn't calm, it's bored — and bored pigs chew fences, bite tails and churn mud into misery. The fix is cheap: deep straw to root through, a scattering of feed rather than a trough, a sturdy ball, logs, a shallow digging pit, something new every few days.

You don't need a joystick. You need to give that brain a job. 🐷