Copyright

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First published by HarperCollins 2018

FIRST EDITION

© Matt Whyman 2018

Illustrations by Micaela Alcaino

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Source ISBN: 9780008301224

Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008301231

Version: 2018-09-03

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my dad

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1. The Reluctant Pig-Keeper

2. The Ancestral Pig

3. The Mind of a Pig

4. The Heart and Soul of a Pig

5. The Language of Pigs

6. The Pig’s Snout

7. The Realm of the Pig

8. The Sow and the Boar

9. What Pigs Can Teach Us About Parenting

10. The Companion Pig

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

1

The Reluctant Pig-Keeper

A simple lesson

Keeping pigs taught me a great deal about myself, and very little about the animals in my care. In the years that Butch and Roxi were part of my family, I discovered that my patience could be stretched almost limitlessly. I also realised that things I had considered to be important didn’t really matter, like flowerbeds and much of the fencing surrounding the garden. As a father of four young children, I was no stranger to hard work and responsibility. Even so, no amount of nappy changing could have prepared me for the muck I faced on a daily basis. The experience brought me closer to my wife, Emma, in the never-ending challenges presented by our porcine pair, but not once did we give up on them.

Above all, for all the trials, escape bids and destruction, I learned about love.

Life before pigs

Looking back, I have only myself to blame. We live in the West Sussex countryside, in a brick and tile house on the edge of woods. There is a garden where our children used to like to play, and neighbours on each side. For some time, I’d kept chickens in an enclosure at the back. The area was defined by a picket fence that crossed behind a small apple tree and attached to the front corner of the shed. In effect, it was a paradise for poultry. My six-strong posse poked and scratched about in an abundance of space, and always sailed to the gate to greet me whenever I wandered down to see them.

When a fox attack put paid to all but one of my flock, it prompted me to ask what animal might deter a repeat visit. What I had in mind was something that would send out a clear signal, like a crocodile, a pool of piranhas or an angry bull. I wasn’t being serious when I suggested a pig, though I’d heard they often spooked foxes. For Emma, it was reason enough to go online and do some research. When she found a type that could supposedly snuggle inside a handbag, it was a done deal.

‘These aren’t normal pigs,’ she pitched to me. ‘They’re minipigs.

To be fair to Emma, she had done her homework. It’s just that at the time this amounted to trawling through a raft of irresistible pictures of impossibly small pigs in baby booties, and scant hard facts about what set them apart from your everyday swine. All she could do was take the word of the few breeders that she found who specialised in minipigs. According to them, pint-sized porkers grew just 12 inches high, which is roughly the same as a Terrier. They were smart, child-friendly, easily trained and happy to live under the same roof as us.

Emma did tell me a lot more about them, but I had stopped paying attention when she delivered the clincher by assuring me I’d barely notice them. By then, my family were totally sold. A run-of-the-mill piglet costs about £30. For an eight-week-old minipig, you’re looking at anything between £500 and £1,000. Despite the hit, Emma believed it would be an investment. ‘The children will remember this,’ she said. Looking back, she wasn’t wrong. It’s just that I don’t think the experience shaped their lives in the way she had hoped.

Butch and Roxi

The new arrivals pitched up in a cat basket. In a bid to butter me up, perhaps, Emma nominated names I’d once proposed for two of our children only to have them dismissed out of hand. As per the breeder’s sales pitch to Emma, they were no bigger than kittens. Perfectly pig-shaped and honking in a high pitch, my first thought was to check their bellies for battery compartments. They just seemed too good to be true. Over the course of their first weekend with us, the sibling pair were effectively magnets for the attention and affections of Emma and the children. As I worked from home, writing books in an office at the front of the house, I used the opportunity to slip away to the typeface.

Then Monday arrived. With the children at school, dropped there by my wife on her way to the office, the task of looking after Butch and Roxi fell to me.

From that moment on, the gap between pig-keeping fantasy and reality opened up like a chasm. From where I was sitting, in front of the computer trying to write for a living, they drove me to distraction. Thoughtfully, for the pigs at any rate, Emma had decided to locate their little ark in my office so that I could watch over them. In a sense, that’s exactly what I did, spending more time peering over my shoulder at a string of interruptions than facing the screen.

Contrary to popular belief, pigs are hygienic creatures. They’ll create a toilet as far from their sleeping quarters as they can. In our house, despite the litter tray Emma had installed in my office, that meant trotting into the front room and slipping behind the television in the corner. Noise-wise, they weren’t too bad. In fact, the snuffling and grunting was really quite soothing as I worked. It was only when the phone rang that the atmosphere soured. It might have been something to do with the frequency of the ringtone, or perhaps pigs just like a singsong. Whatever the case, Butch and Roxi would respond by squealing away. It’s tough enough trying to come across as a professional in a home environment. Now, it sounded as though I was working out of a barnyard.

An animal of mass distraction

Of course, everyone knows that taking on a young pet can be testing. Dogs need to learn you’re the boss, while cats take a while to work out how to manipulate you to their advantage. Pigs are a lot like toddlers. They can be gentle and inquisitive souls and then break into a tantrum when things don’t go their own way. Unlike little kids, as I found out, they don’t grow out of this behaviour. Over time, it just becomes more forceful and out of place in a domestic environment.

What’s more, there are strict rules and regulations to observe, as set out by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). In giving pigs any kind of food that’s been in a kitchen, for example, I risked contravening various biosafety laws. It could earn a hefty fine, but our little livestock didn’t know that. Nor did the youngest of my children as he toddled around with a biscuit in hand and two little pigs trailing after him like low-level jackals. Ultimately, you only have to witness a minipig having a meltdown because you won’t share a sandwich to recognise that life might be easier for everyone if they moved outside.

Butch and Roxi lived inside with us for just a very short time. As the novelty wore off, it very quickly became clear to me that the house was no fit environment for a pig of any description. They’re purpose-built to dig about in the soil, seeking out roots and buried treats, not jam their snouts into the wine rack or flop about in front of the TV waiting for the lottery results. Surprisingly, it didn’t take much to convince Emma and the kids. While they had also come to recognise that this special breed of pig didn’t require carpet under hoof and central heating, I think they also craved a little peace. To be sure they didn’t change their minds, I adopted some ex-battery hens to befriend my sole surviving bird and then played the fox protection card.

And so it was, with a clutch of post-institutionalised chickens perched on the handle of the toolbox beside me, I converted the side of the shed into cosy sleeping quarters for Butch and Roxi. The fencing seemed sturdy enough, I decided, having given it a shake, and there was more than enough space for everyone to peacefully cohabitate.

The growing presence of pigs

In the clear light of day, once the turf war between pig and poultry settled down, it became clear that Butch and Roxi were no longer quite so mini. Roxi developed the fastest. In fact, there was a period when she appeared to look bigger every single time I went out to serve up their beloved pig nuts for breakfast and supper. They also fattened themselves up somewhat by gorging on all the acorns that dropped from the oak tree, along with the leaves when they fell in the autumn.

While Roxi rivalled our late German Shepherd dog in size, Butch compensated by becoming stockier and transforming into a mighty excavator. Having taken over the chicken enclosure, the pair turned it into a cratered mess of mud. I felt so sorry for the birds that I would let them out onto the lawn. Around that time, unwilling to miss out on the party, one of the pigs learned how to lift the latch on the gate. Lashing it shut kept them in check for a while. Butch and Roxi responded by growing big enough to prise away the picket fencing with their snouts.

Surveying the remains of the garden one day, as the pigs slept off their hard work inside the shed, I refused to be defeated. I set about strengthening the fencing – effectively an epic bodge job – and just assumed that our minipigs must have reached their full size. Which makes me laugh in retrospect.

Size and spirit

As time passed, and friends or neighbours visited, they’d often catch their breath on seeing the honking great beasts amid the craters and spoil heaps that was our garden. Within a year, Roxi stood thigh-high to me and had developed a taste for house bricks. She kept rooting them up out of nowhere and then crunching them into powder. A pink pig with dark splodges, she had bat-like ears and a face that could best be described as ‘shovel-like’. She was densely built as well; a solid mass of muscle, fat and obstinacy. Had we let her stay in the house as a piglet, we’d have needed a winch to get her out.

Butch wasn’t quite so monstrously big. In the right light he could even have passed as cute. He was all black with an elongated belly and a soulful expression modelled on Yoda from Star Wars. Castrated at an early age, because frankly, the consequences of leaving him intact were unthinkable, our male minipig also reminded me of a henpecked husband around Roxi. She really did rule the roost, much to the displeasure of the chickens. Had she taken to crowing at sunrise, I don’t think any of us would have been surprised.

Without a doubt, it was a struggle to serve the growing needs of our little livestock. The bolstered picket fencing felt like a dam containing rising waters, but it held all the same. I can’t be as positive about the six-foot close-board garden fencing that formed the back of the enclosure. I panicked the first time I found a splintered, pig-shaped hole in it one morning, and spent the whole day tracking them down. The second and third time was equally troubling. When it happened again I began to wonder if they had been sent on purpose to test the boundaries of my patience.

Around this time, Emma took it upon herself to contact the breeder. Butch and Roxi didn’t exactly match the pictures on the website of cute little creatures curled up in a shoe box, and so she reached out to address it with them like a consumer’s champion crossed with an avenging angel. I have no doubt that my wife would have taken them to task in a reasonable manner, while leaving them in no doubt that passing off pigs in this way was something that had to stop unless they wanted a tall and angry blonde on their doorstep. As it turned out, I can only think that another disgruntled minipig owner had got in before her, because the breeder was no longer trading.

Even when Butch and Roxi behaved themselves, there was no ignoring their ever-increasing size. Despite the squealing, and the fact that our garden looked like a battleground, our neighbours were surprisingly understanding. I lost count of the number of times I had to pre-empt a noise complaint by popping round to apologise. I ended up giving away all the eggs produced by our chickens by way of compensation. In conversation about our plight, they seemed to recognise that we had no idea what we’d let ourselves in for. I dare say they quietly considered us to be foolhardy and impulsive in falling for the idea of keeping pigs as pets without due diligence, and they’d be right.

Where there’s muck …

In some ways, however, we were lucky. Despite the sacrifices, we just about had the space to serve Butch and Roxi’s welfare. Their upkeep dominated our lives. I even called a halt to my work as a novelist to write a cautionary tale about the experience in the form of a memoir. So, what happened here? Had we been conned?

While belatedly attending a pig-keeping course, a conversation with the wise old boy running it opened my eyes to the reality of our situation. He believed the long-standing interest in pigs, and the money that the idea of a miniaturised version could command, led some people in the business to cut corners. ‘Minipigs aren’t a recognised registered breed,’ he told me. ‘Anyone can mate two small-sized pigs, but there’s no guarantee that the offspring will stay small. That would take generations of strictly controlled breeding. Maybe we’ll see such a thing in thirty or forty years from now,’ he added, though it offered little comfort. ‘But what you have are two mixed-breed pigs.’ As for their status as brother and sister, the man took one look at the photograph I showed him and chuckled to himself.

So the minipigs were a myth, it seemed. Piglets passed off for profit. A unicorn for our age, or perhaps just for people like us who were drawn to the idea of a pig as a pet. Yes, small breed pigs exist, like the Vietnamese pot belly and the kunekune, but much depends on your concept of size. The idea of any adult pig that could fit inside a handbag is nonsense. In fact, an adult pig could have that kind of thing for lunch if you left it lying around. The fact was Butch and Roxi were two very expensive bog-standard mongrels. But despite it all, we cared for them deeply. In a way their presence served to bring us closer together as a family under fire.

Now, we’re not the kind of people who would ever give up on their pets. It was hard work, but Emma and I learned a great deal about responsible pig-keeping, and that has its own rewards. Winston Churchill once observed that in looking a pig in the eye you will find an equal peering back at you. I’m not so sure. Those times I levelled with Butch and Roxi, usually in pleading with them to just give me one day without grief, I found two grunting creatures meeting my gaze with more lust for life and sheer determination than I could ever muster. It was also a bonding experience. We were in this together, man and pig. Throughout, my wife and I always wanted to do the right thing for them. We had been ill-prepared and enchanted in equal measure. And yet no matter how much they tested us, Butch and Roxi’s welfare was always our priority.

I can console myself a little by the fact that we weren’t alone in falling for the minipig myth. Other households had invited them into their homes with the very best of intentions, only to find they’d outgrow their welcome. Across the country, animal sanctuaries began to accommodate pigs that were as large as they were lonely and sad, which was the last thing we wanted to do. Our pigs were a part of our lives, even if they had come to dominate every aspect of it. Emma and I agreed that Butch and Roxi had just as much right as us to a happy and fulfilling existence, and we pledged to do everything we could to furnish that for them.

The unexpected genius of pigs

A long time has passed since I called myself a pig-keeper. The emotional scars have healed and the grass has come back with a vengeance, thanks to all that compost. I can look back on this episode in our lives with fond memories, and even smile to myself at some of the escapades that left me seething at the time. As well as encouraging us to give up eating meat, thanks to a heightened respect for animals and their welfare, it’s left me with a fascination about what makes pigs tick. We invited a pair into our world and they trashed it, but what’s it like in their world?

Now that I have pig-free time and space to think, I’m interested in finding out more about life through their eyes. I have no doubt, from my face off with a pair who had my measure from the start, that this is a species with hidden depths. I’m not suggesting a pig has a penchant for algebra, painting or poetry, but there’s something extraordinary going on between those ears that I’m keen to explore. In some ways, I think, it’s a perfect storm of instinct and intelligence that means when a pig puts its mind to something it always gets what it wants.

Pigs aren’t just smart, they’re also strikingly sociable. Butch and Roxi were inseparable and, though not siblings, were they companions by necessity or genuine soulmates? Roxi would regularly use her size and heft advantage to shove Butch from the feeding trough, while our boar was quicker on his trotters and could scurry away with an apple in his jaws before she could catch up. So, they jostled for food and yet served as comfort blankets for each other at night in a kind of intimate snout-to-backside arrangement.

As for escaping and running away, I could guarantee that no matter where Butch and Roxi ended up, I would always find them together. So do pigs form loyal friendships as we do, or undertake feuds with one another? And what’s with the need for a partner in crime? Can they love and loathe, offer comfort, or share wisdom and advice? Are they playful or mischievous, truly lazy or actually greedy, as we often say when suggesting someone is behaving like a pig? Free from the technology that links us, how do they communicate and what do they say? And what is it that drives them to dig from dawn to dusk in order to unearth a single acorn? It’s all a mystery to me, but one I’d like to pick apart in a spirit of curiosity and enthusiasm in order to understand them better.

With help from people who have looked a pig in the eye far deeper than I ever managed, I intend to learn more than I did from all the mistakes I made as a reluctant keeper. Not just about pigs and their personalities – and we’ll meet quite a few – but what it means to connect with these animals and to recognise that they lead lives that can be just as complex, challenging and rewarding as our own.

2

The Ancestral Pig

Windows to the soul

Looking a pig in the eye, as Churchill famously discovered, can be an unnerving experience. Levelling with a dog in the same way will instinctively tell you that you’re in charge, while most cats simply turn away dismissively, but a pig prompts pause for thought. Nose to snout, gazing into those little orbs you’ll find a depth of contemplation to match your own. A pig will blink just like you, batting eyelashes like the wings of a resting butterfly, and invite you to glimpse a spirit as shining and sophisticated as your own.

They’ll also grunt, in a primal way, as if to remind you of their origins.

A pig in time

The ancestral line from today’s domestic pig dates back between nine and 13,000 years to the European Wild Boar. Still in existence today, these are powerful, bristle-backed beasts, long in the skull and often dark in colouring compared to their pink and hairless cousins. They stand on broad shoulders that taper towards their hind legs, like a large breed dog in a heavyweight division.

Also known as Sus scrofa, variations of the wild boar can now be found from Africa to Asia, the Far East to Australia, and in a variety of habitats, including forest, scrub and swampland.

They live in groups and move around depending on what resources are available to them. For a variety of reasons, wild boars are drawn to areas of dense vegetation. In short, their world revolves around three elements: food, water and protection. They can find this in undergrowth and beneath leaf canopies near rivers and streams, but it’s also something humans can provide – which is where the connection between us was first forged.

In a bid to find out more about what drew the boar into our world, I visited Michael Mendl, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare, a recognised expert in the cognition, emotion, individuality and social behaviour of domestic animals. He’s also a man who is passionate about pigs. A warm, softly spoken and thoroughly engaging individual, Professor Mendl opens the door to his office at the Bristol Veterinary School wearing a T-shirt and jeans. This is my kind of academic. And when he gets on to our chosen subject, I am delighted to learn that his immense knowledge base also comes with recognition that we can never know precisely what makes another animal tick – and that within this mystery lies some magic.

‘We can look at fossil records from human settlements dating back about 10,000 years ago for signs that wild boar were on their way towards domestication,’ the Professor begins. ‘It’s likely that an association developed in terms of co-location, and that the boar ventured into the settlements because they were scavenging. As omnivores there would be things that they were interested in, like food that people had left. And I imagine those people looked at the boar and had ideas of their own,’ he adds with a grin. ‘There’s plenty of information available to help us calculate when this happened, but the fact is we don’t really know how the pig was first domesticated.’ The Professor considers me through his glasses for a moment. ‘You can always make up a story about it.’

The origin of the species

By and large, a pig is a docile and benign beast. There are times when it’s best to steer clear, as we’ll discover, but with some understanding they’re generally easy to read. Instinctively, I think, before reaching out to scratch a flank or rub behind an ear, we’ll talk to them. There is something about pigs that always prompts us to do this. They respond to human voices, just as we respond to them. We speak very different languages, but the tone of both a grunt and our greeting seems to effortlessly cross the divide.

The wild boar, on the other hand, is a very different creature. Visiting the outskirts of Bucharest on a work trip recently, I decided to use some free time to go for a run. I have always been a runner (apart from the period when Butch and Roxi devoured my time). I find it helps to clear my head if I’ve been writing all day, and basically serves both my mental and physical health. That day, unfamiliar with the city, I planned a route on Google Maps. I had assumed I could plot a circuit that might take in a park with a lake and suchlike. I just hadn’t realised that this quarter of the Romanian capital contained a vast swathe of dense forest. From above, this dark and ragged expanse looked completely out of keeping with the grid of avenues surrounding it, one of which I would have to follow to pick up the trail path. Aware that stray dogs roamed the streets, I asked at the hotel reception if it would be wise.

‘No problem,’ the receptionist told me. ‘The dogs are harmless if you leave them alone, but in the forest you must watch out for the boar.’ Her English, and my non-existent Romanian, didn’t allow for finding out more. I just thanked her, smiled, and headed outside, where exhaust-stained snow had been shovelled to each side of the avenue.

Despite being dressed in technical shorts and a luminous Lycra top, with the receptionist’s warning in mind I felt like an age-old character from Grimms’ Fairy Tales. All the way to the forest, no more than a mile at most, I dwelled on what I might face. I passed lone street dogs that paid me no attention, and a Rottweiler behind a fence that chased alongside me for a while. It was noisy, but I wasn’t alarmed. We see dogs of every temperament. They live among us, unlike the animal I had been warned about, and as I approached the trailhead I felt as if I was leaving my world and entering one that belonged to them.

I have never seen a wild boar for real. I know they’re beginning to populate pockets of the UK once more, but I still think of them as a livestock version of the Loch Ness Monster. Having become hunted into extinction in the seventeenth century, their quiet reappearance in forested regions from Scotland to the south coast of England is largely believed to have begun in the 1980s as a result of escapes from captivity. Today, it’s estimated that 4,000 wild boar could be at large in the British countryside. It may not sound like many, but an adult male can weigh in at 150kg of muscle and tusk, and is unlikely to turn tail if startled, in the manner of a rabbit or deer. In rural parts of Europe, however, especially to the East, the wild boar is commonplace, and this was uppermost in my mind on leaving the avenue behind and heading deep into the trail.

With my running shoes crunching through the snow and the low sun hanging behind the trees, I found myself becoming all eyes and ears. The only thing I knew about wild boar was that as territorial creatures they could be aggressive when disturbed, and here I was breezing through their kingdom without a pass. I admit to feeling some apprehension, seeing movement in the thickets when there was none, and I picked up my pace along with my heart rate on registering the sound of something scramble away. When I heard a distant but guttural snort my nerve deserted me completely. In my mind, I faced imminent attack by a beast that suddenly embodied my greatest fears. As casually as I could, I turned and ran back the way I had come.

‘You were lucky,’ the receptionist told me when I reported the experience on my return. I am pretty sure she was simply telling me what I needed to hear. There was every chance that I had just been startled by my own shadow, but as a hotel guest I hadn’t paid to be ridiculed. Nevertheless, I returned to my room with a renewed sense that we are hardwired to be wary of wild boar. Like the bear, it’s a creature that we consider to exist across a divide – one that represents danger, should we venture far from home.

The crossing

With no nice hotels to hide out in, or room service to cater for their needs, our ancestors were right to be wary of the bear and the boar when they ventured into the woods and forests. After all, these creatures had a significant advantage in their domain: they would be aware of your presence before you saw them, which would be sure to unsettle anyone but the hunter. So they were best left alone.

And yet the wild boar viewed the world beyond their own through different eyes. Unlike the bear, the boar ventured out from their kingdom and into ours. By extension, they duly broke the spell between man and beast. I like to think they did so with some trepidation, crossing the line under the cover of night to claim the scraps that had been discarded on the outskirts. In a sense, they had found a way into human life that presented no threat. If anything, by clearing the ground of waste that would otherwise attract vermin, these pioneering forebears of the common pig offered something back, and thereby laid the blueprint for a relationship that would thrive.

‘The boar really is quite a wild animal,’ Professor Mendl points out when considering how we took things to another level on discovering a taste for the meat. ‘Some would have been bolder than others, and willing to interact with people, and so the selection and breeding process would have been gradual.’

At one with the pig

Studying fossils, it’s possible to look back through time and see the pig evolve as humans moved from foraging to farming. For the swineherds through the ages, however, the emergence of the docile beast from its wild ancestor would have been imperceptible. Every generation continued the work of the last, slowly shaping form and nature through one century and on to the next. The tail coiled as the skull broadened and the nose flattened into a snout. The dark bristles softened and yielded to a pink and hairless skin, while the ferocity and fury that defined a wild boar under fire burned out to reveal the gentle soul we recognise today.

In many ways, the pig allowed itself to become domesticated in order to earn a place in our world. In changing itself for ever, and submitting to our needs, it brought us closer together.

Throughout the ages, our relationship has become ever more tightly intertwined. The pig assumes the final position in the Chinese zodiac, having shown up last when Jade the Emperor called a gathering of animals. In this story, the pig is celebrated for its honesty and determination, having admitted it fell asleep along the way, and yet it’s believed this might also be where it picked up a reputation for being lazy.

Other areas of folklore see the pig ascribed with different qualities. In Ancient Egypt, the pig was associated with Set, god of storms and disorder, and by Native Americans as a herald of rain; while the Celts considered it to be an icon of fertility and abundance. Pigs have impacted on religion, most notably in being unfit for consumption under laws of both Islam and Judaism. Buddhism portrays a deity called Marici as a beautiful woman in the lotus position astride seven sows, and the New Testament tells the story of the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac, in which Jesus cured a man possessed by casting the evil spirits into a herd of swine.

Across the world, from one culture to another, pigs have come to represent extremes of the human spirit, from sloth, gluttony and dirtiness to irrepressibility and sheer lust for life. There is no middle ground. Love or loathe the common pig, it has made its presence known.

Today, it is believed that the world pig population exceeds one billion. The vast majority are raised for meat on an industrial scale, with breeds such as the Large White and Land Race, Duroc and Piétrain optimised for fast growth and large litters. While pig farming became big business after the Second World War, rare breeds have seen a renaissance in recent decades. Whether driven by welfare issues or the texture and taste of the meat from pre-industrialised breeds, there’s something reassuring about the sight of an old-time pig turning the soil under the sun.

Visit any smallholding or select farm and you’ll find the Gloucester Old Spot, the Berkshire and the Tamworth, the Oxford Sandy and Black, and the Saddleback. While these breeds are physically distinct from one another, with some showing behavioural traits such as the Tamworth’s remarkable escape skills, you’ll discover that each pig also possesses a force of character and spirit that immediately defines one from another.

Approach a pen or a field of pigs and you can be guaranteed a greeting. Bold or shy, they’ll always register your presence – especially if you bring something to eat – and never cease talking to you. From The Three Little Pigs to George Orwell’s revolutionary swine, Winnie-the-Pooh’s timid friend, Piglet, to Miss Piggy, Wilbur and Babe, we have anthropomorphised pigs in the stories we tell one another to better understand ourselves.

Pigs are far from human, however. With outsized ears and disc-shaped snouts there is something unearthly about them, and yet eye to eye, that connection with us is there. What goes through their minds is something we can only wonder at. Be it driven by emotion, instinct or a blend of both, the bond we share has strengthened over time and continues to grow. Just look at advances in modern medicine. Not only has the pig genome been sequenced, opening up their inner world, we have established that our anatomical and physiological make-up – including our cardiovascular systems – are remarkably similar. While we already call upon pig tissue in some life-saving surgical procedures, there will surely come a time in the near future when the pig becomes a viable donor for organ transplants.

In a sense, our hearts already beat as one.

3

The Mind of a Pig

Strands

The animal kingdom will always be a mystery to us. We can explore it in many illuminating ways, from a biological or behavioural perspective, but we will never share that singular strand that binds a species together. As humans, we understand each other in a way that the dog and the cow can only observe from their own world. In the same way, when we peer into the realm of the pig, we do so from a step away.

So, in asking ourselves what makes an animal like a pig tick, let’s not be afraid to call upon our imaginations to bridge the gap. George Orwell did just that in Animal Farm by proposing that, ‘being the cleverest’, the organisation of the livestock into a force to be reckoned with should fall naturally to the swine. In the same way, we’ll never truly know whether a pig feels love or grief, calculates, deliberates or daydreams, of course, but if we take a leap of faith and accept that it’s as sentient a creature as we are then we have the vocabulary to explore that missing strand.

Survival of the smartest

Butch, my not-so-minipig, lived in the shadow of his so-called sister. Growing up together, they had certainly bonded like siblings. They shared the same sleeping quarters, flopped side by side with their snouts poking out, rose at the same time as the cockerels and then picked and foraged their way through each day.

Size informs the porcine equivalent of a pecking order, and this dictated that Roxi was the dominant pig. At feeding time, she could shove Butch to one side with such force that it could knock him off his trotters. I found this alarming at first, and worried about a breakfast-related injury. I took to filling their big rubber feeding bowl and then trying to engineer things so that Butch could get there first. This involved standing between Roxi and the bowl. Then I found that Roxi would just try to barge me out of the way, so that strategy didn’t last long.

Despite her insistence on breakfasting before Butch, she never finished the pig nuts I had measured into the bowl. This might have been down to the fact that Roxi couldn’t manage double helpings, or perhaps she purposely left enough for him. Either way, Butch always got his breakfast. It’s just he only ever did so on her terms. Until, that is, Butch began to use his brains.

To a certain extent, he was only following Roxi’s example. She had figured out that by making a lot of noise from the moment she woke, I would come running like her personal servant. When I say noise, I mean a blood-curdling squeal that must come close to what would accompany the opening of the gates of hell. As she did so at the crack of dawn, it always forced me to career from the house in a half-tied dressing gown in a bid to shut her up before every resident along the lane turned against us.

Over time, it made me so anxious that I took to setting my alarm just ahead of her call to arms. That way, I would at least have time to slip on my wellington boots rather than bound there barefoot. And it worked, for a while. If I crept down to the pigpen, and lifted the latch without making a squeak, I could leave out breakfast and be back in bed before Roxi had a chance to rise and draw breath.

Several weeks into my new strategy, sleep deprived but with the peace of the neighbourhood intact, I found myself under observation as I quietly filled the bowl. I paused and glanced across to the pigs’ sleeping quarters. In the breaking light, a pair of beady eyes peered back at me.

‘Shhh,’ I whispered at Butch, and finished the task at hand.

I retreated to the garden and closed the gate behind me. As I did so, the little black pig slipped out into the open so quietly that all I heard was the crackle of straw. With the sun just a promise behind the woods, he stretched and then crossed to the bowl. I fully expected Roxi to follow. Instead, as he began to pick and graze, she slumbered on with barely a twitch of her ears. It wasn’t until I was back in bed, in fact, with my alarm reset for an extra half an hour, that I heard the familiar rumble and squeal. Only this time it stopped just as soon as it had started. In the silence that followed, curiosity got the better of me. I crossed to the window overlooking the garden, peeled back a curtain and peeped outside. There, in the first bars of sunshine, just as Roxi finished guzzling greedily on what looked like a fair share of pig nuts, I watched the cunning little boar make his way back to bed for a post-breakfast snooze.

As a one-off, I considered the moment worth sharing with my wife and kids. Over the course of the next few mornings, when I found Butch waiting for me beside his snoring partner, and then repeating the same trick, I marked him down as being as shrewd as he was small.

It took a while for Roxi to rumble him, and prime herself to wake up just as soon as Butch slipped from their bed. Naturally, she charged out and reclaimed her position as the pig entitled to first pickings. Butch seemed resigned to the situation, and took himself off for a wee. As he negotiated his way back to the sound of crunching and munching from his sister, I tossed him a handful of conciliatory nuts to keep him occupied while he waited.

The pig in the labyrinth

Professor Mike Mendl responds to my story like a seasoned parent.

‘Initially, your pig might well have been screaming to express hunger,’ he says. ‘But if you’re rewarding that behaviour they will learn from it.’

‘I didn’t feel I had much choice,’ I tell him.

‘If it was a child you would ignore it.’

I know he’s quite right, of course. Maybe Roxi would’ve desisted had I not given in and served breakfast under my own terms. But then I am quite sure many households within a 500-metre radius would’ve countered by serving me with a noise abatement notice. Regardless of my handling, I am interested in the fact that each pig sought to manipulate the situation to their advantage. Did that make them smart, sneaky or both? As the Professor is one of the country’s foremost experts in pig cognition, he seems pleased to move on from my questionable swine-herding skills and on to his specialist subject.

‘The question of whether some animals can be deceptive began with a study of chimps,’ he says. ‘The original study featured a chimp called Bella. The researchers placed food in a certain place in a field for her. She would take the food and then return to her group. Eventually, the adult male sussed her out, followed her and took the food for himself. Next time, Bella then showed an apparent deception by leading him away from the food before rushing back to get it.’

It’s a story that’s as cute as it is enlightening, but Professor Mendl is keen to point out that this doesn’t mean chimps could mask a winning poker hand. ‘It’s sophisticated,’ he says, ‘but we’re not certain that what they’re doing is intentional deception. It’s just because they’re primates and they look a bit like us that people are ready to draw that conclusion. With pigs,’ he suggests, ‘we are more sceptical.’

In his research, and careful not to fall into the trap of wanting to believe that pigs process thoughts and feelings just as we do, the Professor and two colleagues set up a maze with a food source hidden in a one location. Releasing a pig into the maze, they observed it forage around and figure out how to find the food. On the second visit, the pig demonstrated a sharp sense of spatial awareness as much as a memory by heading straight for the source.

For the next stage of the task, a bigger, more dominant companion followed the informed pig into the maze.

‘Over trials, the bigger pig twigged that the other one knew where to go,’ says the Professor. ‘Eventually, when the informed pig went to the food, the bigger pig followed and displaced it.’

I nod, mindful of the way that Roxi displaced Butch from the breakfast bowl, effectively an all-out assault.

‘After that happened a couple of times,’ the Professor continues, ‘the one with the knowledge would not go to the food bucket straight away. Now, one possibility is that the informed pig thought, “Ah, the dominant pig keeps getting to the food and so I’m going to do something different.” On the other hand,’ he says, ‘the informed pig may have just been avoiding the dominant pig because negative things kept happening. Then, once the dominant pig was out of the way, it hurried back for the food. Either way, it’s still a knowledge thing. They’re picking up what to do by association. Once they understand what predicts whether they get – or fail to get – the reward they can be very quick to modify their behaviour.’

I consider my experience in the light of Professor Mendl’s findings. Did Butch and Roxi deceive and exploit each other to get a first crack at the breakfast bowl? In my view, each one had processed the situation they were faced with and worked out how to put themselves first.

According to the Professor’s findings, the key to understanding what makes a pig tick is to recognise its ability to learn. He tells me, for example, how a colleague found some evidence that pigs can grow to understand the concept of reflections. This involved releasing a pig into an arena with a mirror placed just beyond the far end of a barrier. From a certain angle, it enabled the pig to see a food source on the other side. Rather than crashing into the glass, the Professor tells me, the pig appeared to work out how to use the reflection to guide it back around the far end of the barrier in order to reach the food. Whether a pig can recognise its own reflection, which would suggest a degree of self-awareness, we simply don’t know, but we both suspect there is a great deal going on between the ears.

Professor Mendl and his colleagues continue to devise fascinating ways to investigate what degree pigs can be said to be smart or sly. To the best of my knowledge, and under deeply unscientific conditions, all I can say is that I knew two that had repeatedly taken advantage of me.

Wendy’s world

‘I do think pigs are very knowing, but there is a big variation between smart pigs and thick pigs. It’s the same with people, really.’

Wendy Scudamore is so passionate about pigs that it guides her outlook on life. Hidden away on a bucolic farm on the slopes of the Golden Valley in Gloucestershire, her cottage overlooks steep-sided hills and pockets of forest veiled in early-morning mist. Wales is just one field away to the West, with a view of the Black Mountains towards Brecon and a vast, ever-changing sky overhead. On a visit one morning in late spring, I am stopped at the gate by an advance guard of little piglets. They’re rooting around on the farm track for what’s left of a scattering of feed pellets. They’re so locked into their search that I can’t be sure if they’re aware of my presence. I suspect they probably are.

Five minutes later, having entered on their terms, I knock at the farmhouse door to be greeted by a dark-haired, elegant figure in muddy overalls patched at the seat with silver duct tape. Wendy has lived here since 1992, but it’s more than just a home. She introduces me to her son, just back from university and off to walk his dog, while out in the yard and across the fields and paddocks are the pigs that make this a remarkable little world. As she puts on the kettle for tea, checking I’m OK with fresh goat’s milk as that’s all she has, I am struck by how so many of her family pictures feature children through the years, cuddling piglets or being photo-bombed by lumbering fat sows. Wendy is, without a doubt, a pig person, and I am here to be enlightened by her.

‘I used to promote the intelligence of pigs by taking an agility course around agricultural shows,’ she tells me over a distinct but enjoyable cup of tea. ‘I had one lovely pig who used to do it to music. She would follow me round and I just sort of told her what to do. I wanted to show that they aren’t just lumps of meat you can stick in a pen, rear and eat. A pig is a sentient, emotional and very affectionate creature, and I hoped that it would encourage people to become more concerned about the pork that they buy.’

As the owner of an unruly Miniature Dachshund and a selectively deaf Greek rescue, I am heartened to learn Wendy believes that, like dogs, some pigs are more amenable to picking up tricks than others.

‘In 2010, I was invited to train three little ginger pigs to appear at the Cannes Film Festival,’ she tells me. ‘I did it with a clicker, which drove the soundman mad, but one pig in particular would do everything I asked. Brad was fantastic. He would sit and wait for me to tell him what to do, whereas the other two just wouldn’t listen. Nicole Pigman was the worst,’ she says, and I try to keep a poker face. ‘I just couldn’t get her attention. They were from the same litter, just different genders.’

‘Is it a boy-girl thing?’ I ask.

‘The third pig was a boar, and though he was quite smart, it was Brad who stood out as the star. I think it came to down to concentration span,’ she suggests, and then tells me Brad is still alive and well and enjoying his autumn years up in one of the paddocks. She talks about him like an old thespian friend in retirement. As her stories continue, it strikes me that Wendy has formed a lifelong bond with every one of her pigs that begins with her recognition that these are creatures of significant intelligence.

After Bertie

With my limited success in dog training, I know that treats are a key motivator. The clicker is only effective once the dog associates the sound with something that makes it drool, but do pigs operate on the same basis? When I ask Professor Mendl, I am surprised and not a little delighted by his considered view.

‘Pigs are motivated in my tests by the food reward,’ he says, ‘but the experience of the test itself is also rewarding. We don’t know for certain, but pigs seem to enjoy it. When we work with them in the maze test you get the impression they are keen to do the task and not necessarily just for the food. It’s difficult to disentangle,’ he continues, ‘but when we work with them for several days, they learn in what order they’re supposed to leave their pens and start to queue up accordingly. So, one will think, “Well, Bertie is first and then it’s me.” They learn that sequence and know when to come out.’ The Professor tells me that he has even seen cases where one pig will push another out of the way if they’re in the wrong order.

‘So, they’re switched on and also determined,’ I say.

‘It suggests they’re motivated by something to do that is reasonably interesting,’ the Professor replies, choosing his words with the precision his work demands.

At the same time, I think of Wendy and her agility pig in a show ring of straw bales, and wonder who had the most fun.

Egg heads

For a while, Butch and Roxi spent their days cohabiting happily with my chickens. The pigs proved to be a fantastic fox deterrent, which made this set-up seem ideal. With their sleeping quarters at one end of the enclosure, and the coop at the other, the two sides quietly learned to get along. The pigs had a size advantage, of course, and so if they moved into a spot to root around, the chickens would duly dance out of the way. Nevertheless, as rescues from a battery farm the chickens didn’t suffer fools. They could get cross very quickly, proving sharp with their beaks, and so a mutual respect evolved.

Until, that is, the pigs cottoned on to the fact that the hens laid treasure inside their coop.

I had considered that the eggs might be an issue. Then again, the nesting box was tucked at the back of the hen house. I didn’t think Butch and Roxi would be wise to the reason why the hens took themselves in there each morning. Through my eyes, the system was pig-proof.

In some ways, the chickens only had themselves to blame. Among the flock was a vocal leghorn who liked to announce that she had laid successfully by squawking for several minutes afterwards. Maybe there was something in the tone that eventually told Butch and Roxi that it was worth investigating, which they carried out much like a police raid on a drug den at dawn.

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