We visit Breakfast and Nubby, two pigs who live on the far end of Corbin\u2019s farm, Rainbow Roots, at 7 PM when they\u2019re beginning to wake. On hot days, they sleep beneath a tarp, and in the winter, they move to a heated tent-like structure that Corbin and her father built. It\u2019s mid-August\u2014the farm is only a ten-minute drive out of what I\u2019d consider town, and by address, is technically still within the limits of Iowa City. I\u2019ve brought my roommate, Erin, to come with me to see the pigs. Erin hasn\u2019t spent the past week in her bedroom watching YouTube videos of pigs pushing golf balls with their snouts or an Austrian professor breaking down a PowerPoint on pig cognition studies, but she\u2019s along for the ride. I have only recently moved to Iowa, a state I\u2019d never visited when I signed my lease. The farm is unbelievable: golden fields, a sweet red barn, sky as wide and magical as a childhood memory you can\u2019t entirely believe.<\/p>\n
When I was a child, I badly wanted to become a pig farmer, by which I mean that I wanted to have pet pigs as a job. I knew that pig cheese wasn\u2019t a viable market, and I didn\u2019t want to think about death, so I thought I would farm pigs who I would take to the forest. Together, we would hunt for truffles. Then I would sell the truffles. They would earn their keep and I would earn mine.<\/p>\n
I mostly wanted to farm pigs more than I wanted to farm cows or chickens because I heard they were especially smart. Once, I read an article that asked why people want their dogs to be smart. Dogs don\u2019t go to college. They don\u2019t send emails or plan highways. Their job is to lick our legs when we\u2019re trying to put on sunscreen, and bark enthusiastically when we come home, and tug on the leash when they see a sparrow, and twitch in their sleep. Sometimes a dog\u2019s job is also to smell things, or hunt, or protect, or guide, but it\u2019s always generally to excel at being dogs, and it\u2019s never anything involving math. Smart dogs are often unhappy and destructive. Their curiosity manifests as boredom: chewed up sneakers and torn up pillows all over the house.<\/p>\n
My guess is this: when people want a dog to be smart, they\u2019re making a bet about what type of cognition an animal needs to love in a way that\u2019s recognizable to us. Is enjoying us enough? Do they need to imagine that we have minds of our own, with our own likes and dislikes, and if they don\u2019t, do they love us only like a cat loves to stretch its body under sunlight?<\/p>\n
We can throw around these questions all day, questions that have been thrown around since people have had the spare time to ask them\u2014although research on animal cognition has picked up within the past sixty years. One lovely and quantitative piece of information emerged from a researcher\u2019s visit to an animal sanctuary in Arkansas where different species interact. The researcher drew blood from a pair of animal \u201cfriends\u201d\u2014a dog and a goat\u2014before and after they played together. He then analyzed the samples for oxytocin, a chemical central to bonding, nicknamed the \u201ccuddle hormone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dog\u2019s oxytocin levels increased 48% after seeing the goat, which is similar to what happens to a human who has spent time with a friend. Tragically, the goat\u2019s oxytocin increased 210%, which is similar to what happens to a human who is deeply in love.<\/p>\n
I think of lying with my old roommate\u2019s cat on my chest, his eyes mostly closed. He would purr, sometimes so vigorously that it seemed strained. I imagined we were experiencing a moment of intersection, briefly feeling the same thing in worlds that rarely overlapped.<\/p>\n
I ask Corbin if the pigs love each other. I then feel embarrassed. I think: she is the older sister<\/em> and I am the younger one who has not quite learned how to read and I will smear mud on my body if she dares me. <\/em>\u200bStill, she seems like the only person in the world I trust to know the answer. She says: definitely. They\u2019ve been together since birth. I ask if the pigs love her, and she says they probably like her.<\/p>\n Corbin met Breakfast and Nubby when they were six weeks old and she was twenty-three. She was attending a program in Washington, learning to be a vegetable farmer. The school offered courses for farmers who wanted to raise livestock, too. She played with the pigs, and Nubby used to roll over and let Corbin rub her piglet belly. Corbin fell in love. She crowdfunded a campaign to purchase two piglets, although the rest of their litter was slaughtered. Suddenly, there she was: a twenty-three-year-old brand new farmer who now owned two pigs and had to alter almost every aspect of her daily life in order to care for these creatures.<\/p>\n The pigs are enormous. Corbin says that every time a vet comes to the farm they say, wow, big<\/em>\u200b pigs!<\/em>\u200b Because Breakfast and Nubby received anesthesia when they were spayed, their bodies are no longer FDA-approved. They are not the small, pink pigs of the internet, who wear oversized rain boots in a bathtub and wiggle their butts in a gif. They are magnificent. They are full-grown woman pigs, by which I mean they are two and a half years old. Although the natural lifespan of Duroc\/Berkshire pigs is around twelve years, they\u2019re usually six months upon slaughter. This is the most efficient time for the farmer based on the relationship between food and growth.<\/p>\n We\u2019re allowed to scratch their backs, covered in bristly hair, but we\u2019re supposed to leave the mud on\u2014pigs are easily sunburned, and they don\u2019t sweat. Caking themselves in dirt cools and protects them. \u201cSee, they\u2019re so smart,\u201d Corbin says, which is what people say about pigs. They\u2019re like three-year-old children. Dogs, in contrast, are thought to be cognitive equivalents to two-and-a-half-year-old children. First we are dogs, and then we are pigs, and then we are ourselves.<\/p>\n Corbin says pigs are maybe the most misunderstood animal in the world. She says it\u2019s a misconception that pigs are dirty. They choose different places in the field to sleep, eat, and defecate, respectively. They love when she hoses them down with water. They love when she feeds them avocado. They don\u2019t like when she cuts their nails, which she didn\u2019t even know she had to until their feet started to develop painful cuts last winter. It was a hard mystery to solve, because most online information is about potbelly pigs. Now, she trims their nails while they sleep and brings bananas, so they won\u2019t think it\u2019s so bad.<\/p>\n We stand in the field and they grunt eagerly, making noises that Corbin translates. They breathe heavily on her hand, which Corbin tells us is how they say, I love you<\/em>\u200b\u200b, as well as, Hello<\/em>. In Irish, the greeting Dia duit<\/em>\u200b means God be with you<\/em>\u200b\u200b, to which the common response is Dia is \u200bMuire duit<\/em>, which means, God and Mary be with you<\/em>.\u200b The reply sounds nearly competitive: I see your blessing and raise you one<\/em>.\u200b Humans are so smart. I am so smart. I bathe and write and pay my own taxes. I once minored in biology and bring it up all the time. I can paint, too. I can almost do the splits. I want the pigs to breathe heavily on my hand.<\/p>\n Corbin rotates the pigs around the farm, so they can till the soil with their noses to reduce tractor use. The rotation is a method of regenerative agriculture\u2014a form of farming that aims to use land responsibly. This is so exciting to the version still inside of me that wants to go truffle hunting with pigs. I love an employed pig.<\/p>\n Erin and I wear masks and stand far apart from Corbin as she guides us. She\u2019s worried that someone will bring Coronavirus to the farm\u2014she barely leaves herself. She lives in an apartment in the sweet red farmhouse and spends her days tending to the land, primarily alone. She admits that it\u2019s hard. In the growing season between mid-March and mid-November, she works nearly sixteen hours each day. Most of her socialization happens in winter, or when she sees customers. I think about asking if she listens to podcasts but decide this is dumb.<\/p>\n Somehow, miraculously, Corbin and I are the same age\u2014twenty-six. She\u2019s blond with strong, tan legs\u2014confident in a way that commands a room. Confident in a way that studies for the MCAT and then, at twenty-three, changes her mind, and starts an organic vegetable farm by herself instead.<\/p>\n I also studied for the MCAT once but didn\u2019t get far into it, and now I\u2019m a student again\u2014this time living in the Midwest, studying writing. I emailed Corbin after finding her online during my first days in Iowa. The pandemic was in full swing, and I wasn\u2019t sure what to do with myself. I asked if I could get to know her pigs. She agreed.<\/p>\n As we cross the farm, she talks about nitrates and soil and pollinators and I have nothing good to contribute to the conversation. I\u2019m uncomfortably quiet during the walk. I regret wearing shorts, and wonder what types of tics might hide in the grass.<\/p>\n Erin and I will later laugh about how embarrassingly timid we are with Corbin, who seems unbearably wise and brave and impossible for us quasi-teenagers to understand. When we get in the car we say, Corbin thinks we\u2019re undergrads.<\/em> We say, Corbin thinks we\u2019re dumb as rocks. <\/em>\u200bI wish I had some great nitrogen facts to bring up to Corbin. I wish I found some way to tell her that, like her, I had studied biology and changed my mind. I take forever to back out of the farm driveway. In exchange for the ability to almost do the splits, I was not blessed as a great or confident driver. Erin makes fun of me for that too, how my car reverses in excruciating slow motion.<\/p>\n There are lots of questions researchers ask when they ask if an animal is smart: do they have object permanence? Do they have theory of mind? It\u2019s easier to test younger pigs, but that complicates the results because their cognitive abilities haven\u2019t fully developed. Pigs are thought to be capable of deceit. They mislead other pigs so their companions won\u2019t steal their food. Smart and<\/em>\u200b morally ambiguous\u2014go pigs! Pigs can use mirrors, which we know because researchers have set up obstacles in which a pig uses a mirror to find hidden food. Pigs who are \u201cmirror naive\u201d will run towards the glass, pigs who have been exposed to mirrors before will know to look the opposite way.<\/p>\n Interestingly, pigs don\u2019t pass the \u201cmark test,\u201d where a researcher marks a part of an animal\u2019s body and then shows them their reflection. To pass the mark test, the animal should see the ink on their body in the mirror, and then look for it on their own body and pay special attention to this spot: this reflects an awareness of self. When researchers measure animal cognition, they generally look for human-like attributes. Are you obsessed with yourself? Smart! Do you look for yourself on every surface?<\/p>\n When Corbin asked why I wanted to write about pigs, I wasn\u2019t sure how to answer. I said they spark something in me and I\u2019m not sure why. I thought about Kacey Musgraves\u2019 song, Oh, What a<\/em>\u200b World<\/em>\u200b, where she sings about natural wonders around us. I always resented that, after listing glowing plants and mysteries of the universe, Kacey transitioned into a romantic love song with the line, \u201cAnd then there was you,\u201d as if to say\u2014you, and the love between us, is the greatest wonder of all. I wanted it to just be a love song about algae and fungi; I wanted that to be enough. After I first meet the pigs, I listen to the song and attribute the \u201cyou\u201d to Breakfast and Nubby, glorious and pink and coated in mud, in the setting Iowa sun.<\/p>\n Octopuses are another animal praised as smart. In aquariums, they can climb out of their tank, eat a crab, and climb back in. They\u2019re thought to have a basic theory of mind, which is the ability to understand that another\u2019s mind exists and is different from your own. Octopuses, of course, evolved through a different lineage than humans and pigs and mammals of all types. They have three brains and can detect light through their skin. How to compete with that? Still, their theory of mind has a different origin and purpose to ours. Octopus intelligence is very predator\/prey motivated, predicting the reactions of who they want to eat, or who might want to eat them.<\/p>\n Humans think a lot about food too, but our survival is largely built on our ability to cooperate with each other. We need to be able to empathize; we need to make friends. Octopuses are usually solitary animals. Most eat their mates. Octopuses might conceptualize another\u2019s mind, but they don\u2019t exhibit prosocial behavior\u2014actions meant to benefit others or society as a whole.<\/p>\n After reading about octopuses, I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about the word prosocial<\/em>\u200b. If I made a friend cookies I would think, this is prosocial behavior.<\/em>\u200b If I pay extra for pollinator-friendly radishes, this is because I am from a species that loves prosocial behavior, and also loves creating the perception of prosocial behavior and loves praise, and loves looking for myself, and loves all of these things so much that they blur together and I can\u2019t tell the difference.<\/p>\n Pigs are also social. I love this even though it\u2019s an adaptation that benefits survival and not exactly a moral choice. Pigs experience emotional contagion: if a pig enters a situation where another one seems worried, the first pig will start worrying, too. If a pig enters a situation where another one seems excited and happy, that rubs off as well.<\/p>\n In the wild, pigs like to live in groups of two or three females. Male pigs generally live alone, unless breeding, although younger ones may form a social unit sometimes called a bachelor group. Researchers have proposed that densely populated settings are major stressors. Because the pigs\u2019 social-cognitive apparatus is adapted to work in small groups, when they\u2019re in large agricultural environments, they don\u2019t have the memory to recognize each other and where they fall in the hierarchy. The pigs continuously meet and forget each other. They act to establish dominance, often through aggression, and repeat this cycle over and over. Most farmers crop their tails so the pigs won\u2019t bite each other\u2019s. This is how Nubby got her name\u2014the little nub sitting above her pig butt, anticipating a fight.<\/p>\n Breakfast\u2019s name is not a dark joke. When she was a piglet, the farm students learned that if you yelled \u201cBreakfast!\u201d all the young pigs would come running, even if there was no food. The trick was misused too often, and the litter figured out it didn\u2019t necessarily indicate a meal\u2014except for one piglet who ran over every time. Perhaps Breakfast is not such a smart pig after all. It doesn\u2019t matter. When I yell \u201cBreakfast!\u201d she doesn\u2019t run to me. Her tail is long and wags when she\u2019s happy. Once, I saw her wagging it while rummaging around in the grass and I thought of the feeling of being happily engaged in a task.<\/p>\n At home, I watch a video where Suzanne Held opens a lecture on pig cognition by stating that research has historically focused on questions about whether pigs can do what primates can do. She would rather discuss what it is that a pig does. I think this is a good distinction. The problem with comparing pigs to three-year-olds is the expectation that all thinking is built along the same axis. That an animal brain is a little circle within a larger circle of our brains, like we know how to feel everything they feel and then some.<\/p>\n On the first visit, Corbin shows me how to operate the electric fence around the pigs and says I can come and go whenever. I\u2019m thrilled. She says the pigs have never been aggressive, although they don\u2019t know how big they are. When I ask if they dislike anyone, she says they don\u2019t love men or deep noises\u2014and that when pigs make deep noises to us, it\u2019s a sound of discontent.<\/p>\n She says,<\/em>\u200b\u200b \u201cI trust them; I trust you.<\/em>\u200b\u200b\u201d I consider myself: a stranger standing in front of her in running shorts and converse, trying to spend my days with her pigs and think, that is so weird.<\/em> She adds: \u201cJust one thing\u2014don\u2019t get too comfortable. They\u2019re still big animals.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t get too comfortable around the pigs, or even really comfortable at all. The first time I return, I bring Erin and we feel like we\u2019re sneaking around the farm. I bring the pigs old bananas, and apples, and dog toys. Once I actually approach them, I\u2019m too nervous to offer the toys. I cross the fence and the pigs seem suspicious. When I feed them treats, I drop the fruit on the ground because I worry that if I hand it over, they could bite.<\/p>\n Breakfast nudges Erin first\u2014a big, firm snout-push against her. She yelps, and I insist it\u2019s nothing, that Breakfast had only wanted to kiss her. When I pet Breakfast, she nudges me too, harder than I was expecting. Suddenly, I understand: it\u2019s not nothing. The pigs have decided it\u2019s time for us to leave. She nudges me hard enough to lose my balance for a moment. She sets an unmistakable boundary.<\/p>\n When we head out, I worry endlessly that I haven’t set the electric fence correctly, that the pigs will escape and it will be my fault. I worry that the pigs have sensed something bad in me, like a dog barking incessantly at a horrible man. I hold my fingers along the wire and let it shock me over and over to confirm it works. As I back my car out, I worry that I\u2019ll hit Corbin\u2019s pit bull. That wouldn\u2019t be prosocial at all.<\/p>\n After the first visit, I decide the trick will be to keep coming back, to let the pigs see me week after week, to quietly bring food and not pet them if they seem uncomfortable. I bring them watermelon and enjoy their unbelievable slurping sounds. I bring them carrots and they are utterly uninterested. I bring them ice cubes and they think those are fine and worth eating if I\u2019m out of fruit. I admire their silly pig butts which, if you squint, almost look like very flat human butts.<\/p>\n Pigs, generally, have many striking similarities to humans\u2014in their skin, social systems, and hearts. Medical students used to practice surgeries on them. Before my grandpa died, he had a pig valve pumping blood around his body.<\/p>\n Breakfast is the dominant pig. At first, I didn\u2019t see it when Corbin said this, but now it\u2019s all I see. She\u2019s the first one to grunt when a human approaches. If you try to feed Nubby a treat, Breakfast runs over and bumps her and they both squeal. When I visit with friends, I have someone feed Breakfast to distract her while I toss another treat to Nubby\u2014sometimes Breakfast figures it out and runs frantically towards Nubby\u2019s apple. Once, I arrive when only Nubby is awake and feed her all of my old produce. I imagine that maybe Nubby will be the one I bond with\u2014a team of two non-commanding presences.<\/p>\n More often than not, I visit alone. Standing in the field with the pigs, I realize that I\u2019m afraid of them. Breakfast approaches me, waiting for food, and keeps searching me for more when I run out. I Google \u201chow to bond with pigs\u201d and learn that my approach\u2014quietly arriving, offering treats, and leaving\u2014is not right. They\u2019ll learn to see me as a vending machine. I should get on my hands and knees, make eye contact, and speak in a high-pitched voice. When I do this, even sweet, shy Nubby nudges me. I know it\u2019s time to back off.<\/p>\n I think about myself, out here in Iowa, in the middle of a field, on my hands and knees trying and failing over and over to get two pigs to like me. Trying to get Corbin to like me. Trying to get everyone and everything in the whole world to like me, even entities with forms of consciousness I\u2019ll never understand. It\u2019s like passing a mirror I thought was a window, startled to find this as my body: covered in mud, electrocuted by choice. Sometimes I truly degrade myself.<\/p>\n I get up.<\/p>\n I visit them once or twice a week, usually for about twenty minutes. I feed them and coo at them and admire their sandy eyelashes, and then there isn\u2019t much left to do. The thing about pigs is that they\u2019re not dogs and they\u2019re also not three-year-old children: I don\u2019t know how to be around them. A halo of disappointment surrounds the pigs I had admired so much, who I can\u2019t coax into friendship. Maybe it\u2019s my lack of confidence,<\/em>\u200b \u200b I think. They don\u2019t have to love me, it\u2019s not their<\/em>\u200b job. <\/em>\u200bI think, maybe this is a wake-up call. You are here to observe pigs, not befriend them. <\/em>\u200b\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u200bIn the forest I see a tiny turtle, and congratulate myself for walking quickly onward, resisting the urge to crouch and scoop it onto my palm. I wish the turtle could appreciate this. I wish it knew.<\/p>\n Still, my roommates and I turn to the pigs. After breakups, after deaths of grandparents, funerals that aren\u2019t safe to attend\u2014the farm is where we go. We ask these disinterested ungulates to offer something we can\u2019t find among each other. If we knew what it was, maybe we\u2019d know another way to grasp for it.<\/p>\n I ask Corbin what the pigs offer her that nothing else can. She says that what she finds in them is hope. She looks at them and feels like she\u2019s on the right path. She feels like waking up at Iowa dawn is worth it, like she can improve the land she works on and give two pigs a pretty good life. When she first decided to pursue farming instead of medical school, her parents were hesitant to accept the change\u2014but now they see how happy she is. She made the type of choice I may never make, and when I ask if she ever doubts it, she says she never has.<\/p>\n After the pigs realize we\u2019re out of treats, they walk away to stare beyond the field and chew clover. I call after them, \u201cWhat are you thinking about, Mrs. Pig?\u201d They continue looking out toward the forest, indifferent to me. I wonder what they would think if I could somehow communicate to them that I just want to get to know them, that I come here just for them, that I want to write and tell the world how smart they are. I imagine what they would think if they knew I thought they were the stars of the show. Communicating that idea to something with a mind as different as a pig\u2019s is fundamentally a nonsense proposition. Still, I feel firmly that they would, without a doubt, decide that this all was unfathomably dumb.<\/p>\n I\u2019d need to offer them something different, but I\u2019m not sure what. I try to imagine what it\u2019s like to be a pig outside the framework of humans. I try to imagine myself outside the framework of being liked\u2014where I might be, what I might be doing. If I ever have a truffle-hunting pig, I\u2019d name her Clementine.<\/p>\n Corbin\u2019s farm was mostly okay when the storm hit Iowa in August, although Nubby escaped and ran toward the woods. Corbin came out after the wind stopped; she spotted Nubby in the distance. When she first saw Nubby\u2019s body, she thought she was dead: that she had raised a pair of pigs, moved them across the country, and now here she was with an enormous dead hog on her hands. Nubby was fine. \u201cSometimes they try to escape,\u201d Corbin says. She\u2019s seen them use sticks to test the fence, planning their big run out of the pen.<\/p>\n \u201cBut what\u2019s so great about the outside world?\u201d she says, gesturing at the pigs wallowing in summer mud, two females living together like their ancestors, fed watermelons by their fans, pigs who will never be eaten, whose bodies are not even FDA-approved, who till the soil and sleep by each other and fulfill almost all of my pig dreams, except the dream where they breathe hard on my hand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n We visit Breakfast and Nubby, two pigs who live on the far end of Corbin\u2019s farm, Rainbow Roots, at 7 PM when they\u2019re beginning to wake. On hot days, they sleep beneath a tarp, and in the winter, they move to a heated tent-like structure that Corbin and her father built. It\u2019s mid-August\u2014the farm is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[67],"tags":[24],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-4lF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16722,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719\/revisions\/16722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ILANA BEAN<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"