When pigs express their feelings

The pig is the smartest farm animal. Here, the idea was dropped. At some points, he can compete with a dog, a dolphin, or even a chimpanzee. It is able to recognize symbols. And he has a memory. good memory. All you need Learn to play video games.

As mentioned before, the pig also passed the famous test of Mirror. Or at least, a variant specifically designed for it by researchers. Evidence that the pig has self-awareness. This gives hope that he may also be aware of others. Scientists have already managed to show that the pig knows how to deceive its enemy. Understand the pig does not know him. Show what one might call a particular A form of intelligence ” Machiavellian » to hide his food. On the other hand, the pig behaves quite differently in the presence of a congener that it knows. who trusts him.

Thus, the pig has a character. Feel the emotions. It is expressed through sounds that other pigs know how to decode. The problem is that we, simple humans, don’t talk… the pig. this is shame. Because understanding the emotions a pig expresses may allow breeders to improve their well-being. Imagine yourself on a file translation softwarechoose the language ” pig “ And immediately get the translation of the sounds into French. This is little of what the researchers have been able to develop. A tool to decode the sounds of pigs to help breeders better understand the emotions behind them.

pig language translation

Among them is Kokuriko! French researchers. They initially recorded thousands of pig sounds at very different ages and in twenty very different positions, since they were born to the slaughterhouse through various types of breeding to obtain nearly 7500 high quality recordings. Positive and negative emotions.

It was then necessary to mobilize the expertise of behavioral scientists and bioacoustics. first for Classification of emotions They have been studying animals for about thirty years according to the situations they experience. Their assessment was supplemented, where possible, with data on pig heart rate. For their part, biophonologists were there to analyze, in a more technical way, the phonemic structure, frequency, purity, etc. of the utterances.

What emerges from this work is that negative emotions require a preference for high-frequency screaming-type sounds. On the other hand, low-frequency sounds such as grunts can reflect both positive and negative emotions. But, in the first case, for example, the sounds are shorter and small amplitude fluctuations appear.

To take advantage of their findings, the researchers calledintelligence…artificial, this time. They have perfected a system that, compared to the first 7,500 classified sounds, is capable of translating, in more than 90% of cases, parity An emotion that is expressed – whether it is a positive or negative emotion – through utterance, but also to show, in more than 80% of cases, the situation at the origin of these feelings. Technology can help point out a problem to educators. Or let them improve the welfare of their pigs by providing them with new toys.

So, even if we need a medium to get it right, we can now be convinced of it. Pig… not that stupid!