Pigs Use Mirrors

There's a new study out showing that pigs can use mirrors to understand their surroundings. Pigs learn quickly how mirrors work and use them to accomplish their goals, like finding food (before the other pigs find it and eat it).

There's an article in the New York Times that reviews some recent pig research.

I sometimes marvel at how smart pigs are, considering that they don't have hands or voices - just a snout and some hooves. All those smarts go into things like finding food, relating to other pigs, breaking things, escaping, etc.

I think we have a duty to make our pigs taste as good as possible. Because they are such intelligent and pleasant animals, if we are going to breed, fatten, slaughter and eat them, it had better be for a good enough reason, like unparalleled human pleasure. If our Mangalitsa doesn't taste incredible, we might as well not raise them.

My goal is that we make Mangalitsa that tastes good enough that some customers think to themselves, "this tastes so incredible. If it didn't come via Fedex, I'd be willing to fatten some Mangalitsas myself, and slaughter, butcher and process them myself. I would kill these pigs myself, if I had to, to eat them."