In most parts of the world today, we cannot own another person in the way that we can own an automobile. The law is also increasingly taking the view that a human cannot “own” an animal companion either.
This became evident when a wealthy man in Philadelphia sought to have his two dogs euthanized after his death. In a surprising victory for the views of the movement for the rights of animals, a United States federal court decided that animal companions cannot be owned, and therefore could not be disposed of at will as if they were merely chattels. The logic then (as now) is that living beings can never be property. As early as the nineteenth century, Henry Bigelow, professor of medicine at Harvard University, was writing: “There will come a time when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of Science, as they do now to burning at the stake in the name of Religion:’
It is undeniable that we humans share a great deal in common with pigs, though people have been reluctant to acknowledge the similarities. Like us, pigs dream and can see colors. Also like us, and like dogs and wolves, pigs are sociable. (On warm summer nights pigs snuggle up close to one another and for some unexplained reason like to sleep nose to nose.) The females form stable families led by a matriarch with her children and female relatives. Piglets are particularly fond of play, just as human children are, and chase one another, play-fight, play-love, tumble down hills, and generally engage in a wide variety of enjoyable activities. As Karl Schwenke points out, In a Pig’s Eye,”Pigs are gregarious animals. Like children, they thrive on affection, enjoy toys, have a short attention span, and are easily bored.’ He reports that when pigs were put into a small pen, as they are on most farms,”their world was instantly narrowed to each other, the food, and the sty, and as they grew, their world became smaller and smaller. The tedium of their existence soon became apparent: they were lethargic, exhibited ragged ears, had droopy tails, and rapidly acquired that dull-eyed glaze that swineherds associate with six- or seven-year-old breeding hogs.” Much like children, piglets do not develop in a normal way when they are deprived of the opportunity to engage in play.
Kim Sturla, of the northern California animal sanctuary Animal Place, tells me that pigs express friendships with other pigs a variety of ways: vocalizing, body language, who they sleep with, explore with, hang out with during the day. Some pigs, Sturla says, are friendly with certain pigs because they arrived at the sanctuary about the same time. Juveniles will play with each other, and immense patience is demonstrated with new piglets. One can witness the interaction and affection when pigs greet each other, snout to snout, sometimes with love grunts—soft, wispy, open-mouthed greetings given when a pig is in heat, feeling amorous, or maybe just feeling sweetly affectionate. Pigs can also be cliquish: an older new arrival may not easily find acceptance.
Like humans, pigs are omnivores. Though they are often fed garbage and eat it, their choices—if allowed—would not be dissimilar to our own. Sturla tells me that when she offers her pigs mango or a head of broccoli, they will always take the mango. She explains that they have a sweet tooth and a pastry will always win over a healthy vegetable. Remind you of somebody? They get easily bored with the same food. They love melons, bananas, and apples, but if they have had them for a few days, they will set them aside and eat whatever other food is new first. We don’t often think of pigs and cleanliness in the same breath, but pigs, if permitted, will be more fastidious in eating and in general behavior than dogs. When offered anything unusual to eat, a pig will sniff at it and nibble gently. About 90 percent of their diet in the wild is plant-based, consisting of fruit, seeds, roots, and tubers. In fact, a study of what fruits pigs routinely eat, conducted on one of the Indonesian islands, found that they would eat more than fifty varieties. Perhaps this is why of all animals their flesh most resembles human flesh, which is somewhat disconcerting when you consider that more than 40 percent of all meat raised in the world is pork.
Like people, pigs avoid extreme temperatures. Since they have sweat glands only on their noses, it is important that they do not overheat. Water is not effective in cooling them down because it evaporates quickly, whereas mud provides evaporative cooling over a much longer period of time. This is why pigs, like elephants, need to roll in mud. Mud protects their sensitive skin from sunburn, dangerous to a pig, and also from flies and other parasites. It is not, then, that pigs are dirty; quite the contrary. Never will a pig defecate near its sleeping or eating quarters. Fastidiousness is one of a pig’s most salient characteristics. Kim Sturla has repeatedly seen old arthritic sows waking up early in the morning, getting their stiff bodies up with enormous effort, then dragging themselves through deep mud to walk a long distance away from the barn before they would urinate. We can only imagine the suffering involved when pigs are confined in such a small space that they refuse to foul their own stalls, as Compassion in World Farming has documented and others have noted.
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