If you’ve heard one porcine grunt, you haven’t heard them all.
There’s a lot of communication happening through pig sounds, if you know what to listen for.
A team of researchers has come up with a translator of sorts for pigs.
It’s a computer algorithm that interprets all those different pig grunts as emotions.
Understanding animal emotions can help with improving animal welfare and care.
The team correlated the different calls with the pigs' activities and body language.
The animals had positive emotions when nursing, reuniting with family, cuddling with litter mates and running freely.
Negative emotions came from situations involving social isolation, fights, castration and waiting in a slaughterhouse.
In the positive situations, the calls are far shorter, with minor fluctuations in amplitude.
Briefer said the next step could involve developing the algorithm into an app for farmers.
Perhaps it could be called Instagrunt…
