Playing with pigs and lasers

Pigs, like humans, can get bored. Perhaps they’d like to play a game to amuse themselves? Even better, with interacting humans? A project designed to examine such possibilities is underway at Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht and Wageningen University Livestock Research Department in The Netherlands. It’s called ‘Playing With Pigs’ and is “researching the complex relationship between pigs and humans through game design”. The research team decided to experiment with laser-pointers and groups of pigs – making a new discovery :

“During the design process we discovered something that, to our knowledge at the time, animal scientists had not noticed until now: pigs like to play with light. For example, pigs are fascinated by the movement of reflected points of light, and are attracted to new light spots on a surface.”

A website dedicated to playing with pigs is available at www.playingwithpigs.nl

Also see: (Improbable pig-related articles)

‘Pigness’ (Cinematic and Televisual) – a thesis

“Can I have a lick o’ your lollipop?” [Sugar pigs]