Pet pig owner here. Pigs are problem solvers. Pigs are optimizers.

The following videos of my pig demonstrate this.

Video 2: Pig is first learning the task.

Video 3: Pig has slightly optimized the task.

Video 1: Pig has mastered the task.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/37f48azh2bt4xk4/Wy3iHDMp1e?previe...

That's pretty excellent. For those who don't watch the videos, they feature a feeding device that must be spun to release food. Video 2 features the pig figuring out that spinning the wheel releases food, and by the last video, the pig is spinning the wheel numerous times to release several food drops before eating.

I was waiting for the pig to push all the balls out of the frame so that it could spin the feeding wheel without rooting through the balls.

I think they like rooting around

Yeah, but a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.

Having dealt with both I would rate pigs higher in personality than dogs. They are very smart, learn stuff quickly and definitely have individual personalities.

I always find it very hypocritical that the same people who have no problem eating pork are outraged over people eating dogs in Asia.

The issue with dogs is that there are no dog farms. All of the dogs eaten are stolen or taken from the street.

I think people would still be outraged if there were dog farms. Especially if the living conditions wee like in pig farms.

in korea where dogs are eaten often, the dogs come from dog farms.

> there are no dog farms

Definitely are Asia (Laos and Cambodia, I think)

I think the key difference here is that dogs were bred for thousands of years, to be our companions, while pigs were bred as food. That's where it comes from.

You are looking at the extrinsic value of a pig, but when it comes to ethics, you should look at its intrinsic value.

A pig wants to live just like a dog does. They want to avoid pain and suffering just like a dog does. They seek comfort just like dogs. The fact that they were bred for a certain human purpose, doesn't change any of that.

Intrinsically, an ant, or a fly, wants to live just like pigs or dogs. It's ok to kill ants and flies because it is socially approved by the majority of humans around you. In some communities in china, it's ok to kill dogs for eating them, so a person would feel ok doing it. The animal doesn't matter at all, only the opinion of humans around you. As it happens, lighting dogs on fire is not widely accepted, and killing pigs for food is. It's the culture that matters.

In what way is that a meaningful distinction?

I've been thinking about this recently.

In a society, people seem to taboo things which indicate a general lack of emotion toward other members of the society. With farm animals, there are social (and religious and legal!) rules around maintenance and slaughter, and farmers deal with large groups of animals, so the relationship between farmer and animal is one-to-many and doesn't leave much room for long term emotional bonds to form.

For working animals and pets, the bond is one-to-one, and involves working directly with the animal in question. The relationship with a working animal is much closer to the relationship with another human. Thus, killing a dog in a society where the role of a dog is to herd cattle makes you seem dangerous to the people around you, while killing a cow in a society where cows are food is explicitly sanctioned and not an indication that you might murder your co-workers.

I think those are some good observations around explaining the taboo, but I think you'll agree that they're descriptive rather than prospective.

Because when one curates something for a specific purpose, it is sub optimal to use it contrary that purpose. In this case, dogs have specifically been domesticated to be companions for humans for something like 15,000 years. Humans specifically selected for specific behaviors and traits for dogs for them to be more compatible with humans. In the United States, dogs are used almost exclusively as pets and helper animals.

Pigs have never been domesticated in that way in large numbers and have always generally been used as food, or for limited other purposes, occasionally as pets.

I think this difference in lineage and purpose leads to a very meaningful distinction.

It's a betrayal of trust.

You know how Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a pig that has been genetically bred to want to be eaten? Like that is it's greatest desire in the world.

Dogs have been selectively bred over thousands of years to want to be our friends - to trust us, and to work together as companions. To deliberately kill and eat an animal like that is worse than eating any other.

You're conflating things at the species and individual level.

The dog species doesn't trust us (in any meaningful way). Individuals dogs do. Likewise, regardless of what we've bred "food" animals for, properly cared for farmed animal will hold the same implicit trust in a farmer as a dog does with his owner.

These evaluations need to be made at the individual level to make any sense.

Not a pig it was (will be?) a cow.

Pigs have personality too. But most people would never know it given how livestock are treated.

As someone who has been around beef-cattle and also had milk cows growing up, cows are much the same way. They have a lot of personality and are not altogether different than dogs or anything else. Cattle raised for beef have a lot less human interaction and therefore have less "personality". Our cows knew their names and were very affectionate but they also had been interacted with since birth.

Most farm animals are probably psychotic and can't develop a personality just because of the circumstances they are raised in. If you threw 20 humans into a small pen where they have to live from birth to death they would probably be crippled psychologically and not appear very smart too.

Dogs have co-evolved with humans for tens of thousands of years, and demonstrate traits and behaviors that makes it much easier for humans to empathize and socialize with them. For example, you can tell when a dog is happy because their facial expressions resemble a human smile. Not so with livestock. Sure, you can figure it out after spending time with them, but it's inarguably not the same thing.

No, dogs don't smile. Some learn the baring of teeth as being peaceful instead of defensive, but most of them don't, or rather can't smile.

You can find the same exact "smile" in goats, sheep and pigs, they're definitely not making that face because they're happy.

Yes, wrong example. Anyway, science has shown us that human-dog coevolution does have a noticeable impact on the way we interact with dogs. Specifically, sustained eye contact between a human and a familiar dog raises oxytocin levels to increase in both. The same type of relationship has not been demonstrated with other domesticated animals, to my knowledge.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-gaze-from-...

Yeah, I know all that.

But a dog's smile is so much more, posture, sounds, tail wagging..

A dog's smile makes me smile.

And for that matter, humans can bare their teeth as well..

As a kid in 4H I raised purebred Duroc and showed them at the Evergreen State Fair. You had to train them to respond to cane taps, move right and left, stop start, strike standard poses so the judges could rate breed characteristics, etc. I can assure you that a healthy, well-cared for pig has plenty of personality.

For those who are confused, the above line is just quoting the movie Pulp Fiction.

Heh, was going to mention this. Funny how nobody expects inline pop culture references in HN discussions, so they're often just taken at face value.

> Funny how nobody expects inline pop culture references in HN discussions, so they're often just taken at face value.

Or the average age of the site is too young to remember Pulp Fiction.

You'd be surprised how interesting a pig can be as a pet. They show amazing social behaviours, and they also seem to be quite good at understanding simple spoken communication.

So by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal? Is that true?

Huge misconception about pigs. Pigs are very clean and if given a choice will never go to the bathroom anywhere close to where they sleep or eat.

Pigs use mud to avoid sunburn.

« Some people have gone so far, especially with show pigs, as to slather sun screen onto their pigs when they know that they will be out in the sun for a considerable time and they don't want them to get dirty with mud. » -- http://petcaretips.net/pigs-sunburn.html

You could also just keep your pet pig indoors all the time.

Yep, pigs are highly intelligent. They've been shown to be able to learn how to use mirrors to locate food, are possibly capable of theory of mind, deception and visual perspective taking. Some of these can be disputed as associative learning but we're also finding out that the same can also be said of aspects of higher human cognition. And from work in machine learning, we know how far even just associative learning and pattern matching can take you.

This is a short survey article that goes into more detail on pig intelligence: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982210...

Personally, I don't eat anything above a certain (arbitrarily defined) intelligence threshold. So octopus and pig are out. Chicken, however...

I've got bad news for you buddy. :)

(2 January 2017) http://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-new...

I dunno. Have been feeding the neighbour's chooks for the last few weeks.

Amazing creatures, incredibly friendly and even affectionate.

I really enjoy going to visit them. I come away with a huge grin on my face.

I don't feel great about that either, but octopuses have shown repeatedly their problem solving abilities.

Perhaps that would be an interesting area of study. I think the lack of dexterous limbs probably inhibits the pig's ability to solve certain problems they would otherwise be mentally capable of tackling.

I've seen an experiment in which pigs controlled an object on a screen, using a 'joystick', by controlling it with their snout. It certainly looked as if they were demonstrating a level of intelligence.

I read about that study as well, it's what I was thinking of when I made the previous comment! Cool stuff! Do you have a link by any chance?

All I know is that it was a TV programme in the UK; sorry, I know that's not very useful!

We had two pigs together with our horse and they were really creative at figuring out how to open doors and get into the food containers.