Do pigs get better at finding a detour when a blocked-route test is repeated?

Details

The researchers studied how housing and individual behavioural style related to pigs’ exploration and memory for routes. The pigs had lived from birth in either barren pens or pens with straw bedding. From each housing group, the researchers selected pigs that had resisted strongly or weakly during early-life restraint tests.

At 12 weeks, the pigs explored a maze three times with a pen mate. They were then tested individually, with returning to their home pen and rejoining other pigs providing a strong incentive to find the exit. The researchers blocked the direct route, requiring a detour, and then repeated this test once. Performance improved substantially on the repeat test.

Housing and behavioural style affected exploration during both initial visits and memory tests, but the researchers found no corresponding effect on memory-test performance. This does not establish that the groups had identical memory abilities, or that straw bedding cannot affect learning in other settings. The authors suggested that differences in exploration could sometimes look like differences in learning or memory. The marked improvement also led them to emphasize the need for sufficiently challenging tasks when testing pigs’ memory for routes.