Pigs Pigs Pigs

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
British politician and Nobel Prize Laureate Winston Churchill.

1. Pigs are omnivores. This means they will eat most kinds of food. In the wild they use their large snouts to forage for truffles, worms, insects and plants. They will also eat tree bark and will scavenge food from other creatures left overs.

2. Pigs are smarter than dogs. Yes it is really true. They can be toilet trained and trained to complete tasks. They have long term memories and respond to voice commands. "[Pigs] have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more
so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds."
Professor Donald Broom of Cambridge University Veterinary School

3. Pigs are playful. Pigs just love to play. In the wild they have highly complex social structures and from about 3 weeks old the piglets will start to play. They really are a joy to watch and they will play with you too.

4. Pigs are not dirty That is just a myth, which stems from the fact that pigs bathe in mud to cool themselves down. Mud also acts as an effective sunscreen. Pigs do not sweat, so it is necessary to cool down in other ways. You know what? Pigs actually prefer to cool off in water if given a choice and in the wild they will build their toilet area away from the rest of their home.

5. Pigs are great mothers Pigs will leave the group a day before giving birth and will collect leaves and nesting material to make her nest. She will spend her first week with her piglets isolated from the rest of the group, in the nest. She develops a strong bond with the little ones and will even sing to them.

In 1998, in Britain, two Tamworth pigs (one of the oldest pig breeds) managed to escape the slaughterhouse. They burrowed under a fence, swam across a large, icy river and hid in a thicket.

Days later when the slaughter man saw them, they ran away as fast as they could. They were not captured until 7 days later. The abattoir they escaped from was later criticized for appalling standards,

This was one of the first times the public became aware that a pig does not want to die and the newspapers covered the story, winning massive support for the pigs. Hundreds of people offered the animals a home and now they are living out the rest of their lives in an animal sanctuary.

I love this story because it has a happy ending, but it does bring home the point that pigs are incredibly stressed when being transported to the slaughter house and even more so when they get there. The noises, smells and atmosphere let them know exactly what is going on. These two pigs escaped with an urgency that implies they knew what was going to happen and I am so happy they did escape their fate.