Decoding emotions: Scientists can now tell if a pig is happy or sad

Is it possible to understand what a pig feels when it squeals or grunts? Perhaps so. An international team of scientists from Denmark, Switzerland, France, Germany, Norway, and the Czech Republic have found a way to decode the language of pigs.

In the study published earlier this month in Scientific Reports, researchers have managed to capture the emotions of the pigs by recording their songs in different scenarios.

Using 7,414 sounds from 411 pigs, the researchers developed an algorithm to decode whether pigs were experiencing a positive emotion, negative emotion or something in between.

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The recordings were collected in different situations encountered by commercial pigs, both positive and negative, from when they are born until their deaths.

The positive situations include when piglets suckle from their mothers or when they arere united with their family after being separated.

The emotionally negative situations included separation, fights between piglets, castration and slaughter, among others.

“With this study, we demonstrate that animal sounds provide great insight into their emotions. We also prove that an algorithm can be used to decode and understand the emotions of pigs, which is an important step towards improved animal welfare for livestock,” says associate professor Elodie Briefer of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Biology at the University of Copenhagen, who co-led the study.

After analysing over 7000 audio recordings to see if there was a pattern in the sounds while undergoing certain emotions, the researchers found more high-frequency calls, such as screams and squeals, in negative situations.

At the same time, low-frequency calls, such as barks and grunts, occurred both in situations where the pigs experienced positive or negative emotions.

The situations between the extremes were particularly interesting, the authors noted.

With an even more thorough analysis of the sound files, the researchers found a new pattern that revealed what the pigs experienced in certain situations in even greater detail.

The study was conducted by the researchers fromthe University of Copenhagen, ETH Zurich and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment.