Skip to main page content

WORKSHOP 7: Suzanne Held: Pig Cognition and Why It Matters

My Session Status

What:
Workshop
When:
7:30 PM, Tuesday 3 Jul 2018 (2 hours)

VIDEO OF PRESENTATION

Our main purpose here is to introduce what is known about the cognitive abilities that facilitate natural pig behaviour. Commercial pigs released into natural conditions show many of the behavioural characteristics of their wild ancestors: they will form family groups with differentiated rank relationships, forage together, build nests for giving birth and rearing their neonates, the sexes mingle mainly for mating. However, most commercial pigs are kept in conditions very different from those in which their species evolved. This creates a potential mismatch between motivation and expectation on the one hand, and reality on the other. Our other aim, therefore, is to explore how we might assess scientifically how such a mismatch might make the pigs feel.

Marino, L., & Colvin, C. M. (2016). Thinking Pigs: Cognition, Emotion, and Personality.
van Nieuwamerongen, S. E., Mendl, M., Held, S., Soede, N. M., & Bolhuis, J. E. (2017). Post-weaning social and cognitive performance of piglets raised pre-weaning either in a complex multi-suckling group housing system or in a conventional system with a crated sowAnimal cognition20(5), 907-921.
Mendl, M., Held, S., & Byrne, R. W. (2010). Pig cognitionCurrent Biology20(18), R796-R798.
Piazza, J., & Loughnan, S. (2016). When Meat Gets Personal, Animals’ Minds Matter Less: Motivated Use of Intelligence Information in Judgments of Moral StandingSocial Psychological and Personality Science7(8), 867-874.
Suzanne Held (Speaker)
Bristol Veterinary School (University of Bristol)

Riana Topan (Discussant)
Humane Society International/Canada
Abby McCuaig (Discussant)
Worldwide Save Movemen



Arthur Reber (Moderator)
Adjunct Professor University of British Columbia



Suzanne Held

Participant

Riana Topan

Other Participant

Abby McCuaig

Other Participant

My Session Status

Session detail
Allows attendees to send short textual feedback to the organizer for a session. This is only sent to the organizer and not the speakers.
To respect data privacy rules, this option only displays profiles of attendees who have chosen to share their profile information publicly.

Changes here will affect all session detail pages