Introducing the brain: farm animal intelligence (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, December 08, 2023, 17:42 (349 days ago) @ David Turell

Studies in pigs, cows, goats suggest their thought patterns:

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/08_december_2023/41...

"The work is part of a small, but growing field that’s beginning to overturn the idea that livestock are dumb and unworthy of scientific attention. Over the past decade, researchers at FBN and elsewhere have shown that pigs show signs of empathy, goats rival dogs in some tests of social intelligence, and, in one of the field’s, um, splashiest recent finds, cows can be potty trained, suggesting a self-awareness behind the blank stares and cud chewing that has shocked even some experts.

“'There’s a lot to be learned by studying the mental lives of these creatures,” says Christopher Krupenye, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist who explores cognition in humans and more traditional animal models such as chimpanzees and dogs. Ignoring livestock, he says, has been a “missed opportunity” by the scientific community.

"The field faces challenges, however, and not just because of rambunctious goats. Farm animals can be huge, many are hard to train, and traditional funders and high-profile journals have generally spurned such studies. But as scientists push past these obstacles, they are gaining insights not only into the minds of livestock, but into the evolution of our own cognition as well. What they learn could even change the way we house and treat these creatures.

“'If we don’t understand how these animals think, then we won’t understand what they need,” says Jan Langbein, an applied ethologist at FBN. “And if we don’t understand what they need, we can’t design better environments for them.'”

Comment: It is impossible to truncate this very long descriptive article. The point is well made. We know our own horses think, react, make friends and show dislike for others.