Visayan Warty Pigs Using Tools
Sep 21, 2019
Meredith Root-Bernstein
Posted on 10/31/2019 11:43:41 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Dolphins, chimpanzees, and crows all use tools to help accomplish tasks. Now, pigs have joined the club, National Geographic reports. For the first time, researchers have caught a species of swine called the Visayan warty pig using pieces of bark as a shovel to move dirt around in their nests. Researchers filmed several of the pigs in captivity as they got their nests ready to welcome piglets in the spring, and observed the animals using tools 11 times over 2 years. The team also sprinkled a few spatulas around the enclosure, in case the pigs might prefer a more easily held tool. For the most part, the swine stuck to natural tools such as bark or sticks, ignoring the spatulas, the team reports in Mammalian Biology. The researchers did not catch wind of any pigs using the tool of political power, however, so readers can rest easy knowing that Animal Farm is still fiction. For now.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
Visayan Warty Pigs Using Tools
Sep 21, 2019
Meredith Root-Bernstein
Even though they sleep in their own, uh, output, pigs tend to be "very clean animals" (in the words of my late father), and of course, they're also smarter than most farm critters, and know what's coming. They lead lives of quiet desperation, y'know, because they're delicious.
Hope the Dems don’t catch on to this.
fake news... that’s not a tool... that’s a stick.
sheesh.
I had a large woods rat using a stick to spring my rat traps. The stick trick did not work in the electronic rat trap though. He was almost too big to fit in the trap and hung 1/3 of his body out. The stick he used that last time was one of those wire twist ties.
Can somebody post a picture of the pig Hillary using a hammer on her Blackberry?
How can anyone know what goes on in the mind of another being or creature? Unless perhaps that creature is a teenage boy with a Playboy magazine (that helps narrow it down a bit).
Rats see other rats screw up and learn from those mistakes. Creepy that they can do that. :^o
Tried to get a pig to change a flat once, but he just went wee-wee-wee all the way home.
Don’t look back, they are catching up. :)
Four legs good, two legs bad.
GMTA!
Farmer Jones got out of his car and while heading for his friend’s door, noticed a pig with a wooden leg. His curiosity roused, he asked, “Fred, how’d that pig get him a wooden leg?”
“Well, Michael, that’s a mighty special pig! A while back a wild boar attacked me while I was walking in the woods. That pig there came a runnin’, went after that boar and chased him away. Saved my life!”
“And the boar tore up his leg?”
“No he was fine after that. But a bit later we had that fire. Started in the shed up against the barn. Well, that ole pig started squealin’ like he was stuck, woke us up, and ‘fore we got out here, the darn thing had herded the other animals out of the barn and saved ‘em all!”
“So that’s when he hurt his leg, huh, Fred?”
“No, Michael. He was a might winded, though. When my tractor hit a rock and rolled down the hill into the pond I was knocked clean out. When I came to, that pig had dove into the pond and dragged me out ‘fore I drownded. Sure did save my life.”
“And that was when he hurt his leg?”
“Oh no, he was fine. Cleaned him up, too.”
“OK, Fred. So just tell me. How did he get the wooden leg?”
“Well”, the farmer tells him, “A pig like that, you don’t want to eat all at once!”
The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy knows;
“fake news... that’s not a tool... that’s a stick.”
sheesh.
Yeah, it is only a tool, if the pig bought it at Ace or Home Depot.
I have a small, 190 page, book titled RAT. Two of the book jacket’s comments are indicative what is inside. “A very creepy and entertaining book” and “Appallingly informative”
exactly... like all those chipped stones neanderthals presumably “used”
Wasn’t a gavel by any chance was it?
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