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Animals
Special Issues
Cognition, Emotion, and Personality in Pigs—Implications in Welfare Issues
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Cognition, Emotion, and Personality in Pigs—Implications in Welfare Issues

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Welfare".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 4942

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Patrick Pageat

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Ecology, IRSEA (Research Institute in Semiochemistry and Applied Ethology), Apt, France
Interests: semiochemistry, chemical ecology; ethology; behavioral medicine; biological indicators; stress; emotion; domestication
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Míriam Marcet-Rius

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institut de Recherche En Sémiochimie Et Éthologie Appliquée (IRSEA), Quartier Salignan, 84400 Apt, France
Interests: animal behavior, animal welfare, applied ethology; emotions; farm animals; pig husbandry; positive welfare; semiochemistry; welfare indicators
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Somewhere in the Middle East, 9000 to 10,000 years B.C., humans and pigs began to interact and cooperate. Our relationship with this fascinating animal has greatly varied over time. The pig became a pariah species where it was first domesticated, whereas it underwent intensive breeding in other countries. Even there, most people associate pigs with dirtiness, thus allowing to treat this animal as a thing. This commodification of a sensitive living being is, nowadays, unbearable. One of the ways to make people more conscious about animals is certainly to make them aware of their sensitivity, emotions, and cognition. Our understanding of the pig’s world—the pig’s way to detect, understand, and classify it—and sophisticated social life has dramatically improved over the last 25 years. The goal of this Special Issue is to merge all recent research in the abovementioned fields so to effectively present lesser-known features of pigs and make a significant contribution to support the improvement of pigs’ breeding conditions and thus of their welfare.

Prof. Dr. Patrick Pageat
Dr. Míriam Marcet-Rius
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Cognition in Pigs
  • Pigs’ Emotions
  • Personality in Pigs
  • Pigs’ Welfare
  • Pigs’ Ethology

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 899 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Demonstrator Social Rank on the Attentiveness and Motivation of Pigs to Positively Interact with Their Human Caretakers
by Daniela Luna, Catalina González, Christopher J. Byrd, Rocío Palomo, Elizabeth Huenul and Jaime Figueroa
Animals 2021, 11(7), 2140; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11072140 - 20 Jul 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3650
Abstract
In this study, we addressed the social attentiveness, as well as the phenomenon of social facilitation and inhibition in the context of a positive human–pig relationship. Specifically, we investigated whether the social rank of an experienced pig (termed “demonstrator”) has an effect on [...] Read more.
In this study, we addressed the social attentiveness, as well as the phenomenon of social facilitation and inhibition in the context of a positive human–pig relationship. Specifically, we investigated whether the social rank of an experienced pig (termed “demonstrator”) has an effect on the attentiveness of the remaining pen mates (N = 40) when they observe the demonstrator being gently handled by a stockperson from behind an acrylic panel. We found that pigs preferentially attended to dominant demonstrators rather than subordinate demonstrators during their gentle handling sessions with the stockperson. Additionally, we also examined whether the presence of a demonstrator pig of different social rank, who previously established a positive relationship with the stockperson in presence of conspecifics, affects the behavior and motivation of their pen mates to positively interact with the stockperson. To test for the effect of the presence and demonstrator’s social rank on pen mate interactions with the stockperson, we evaluated the behavior of domestic pigs (N = 65) toward the stockperson using a human-approach test in their home-pen. Pigs showed a decrease in their motivation to positively interact with the stockperson when a socially dominant demonstrator was present, behaving similarly to animals receiving minimal human contact (control group). Overall, they exhibited a greater latency to physical contact, a lower acceptance of stroking, and spent more time looking at the stockperson compared to pigs exposed to subordinate demonstrators. Taken together, these findings expand our current understanding of pigs’ cognition and social behavior, and the nature of social attention bias in farm animals. Our findings indicate that positive handling of previously selected subordinate demonstrators seems to be the best strategy to reduce the level of fear in large groups of pigs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cognition, Emotion, and Personality in Pigs—Implications in Welfare Issues)
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