#bearwitness

On November 1st, neuroscientist Lori Marino, who has a PhD in biopsychology, testified before Justice David Harris at the Pigtrial.

Marino discussed the cognitive and emotional abilities, and the behavior, of pigs.

“Pigs usually form social groups of several females and their offspring” — but can’t do that in a factory farm setting, said Marino, who has testified about a half-dozen times in the U.S. as an expert in animal psychology, but never before in Canada.

“Pigs certainly have personalities,” she said, noting they exhibit human traits such as curiosity, shyness and bullying.

“They have a sense of themselves in terms of a social community. Pigs and dogs are very similar in terms of sociability.

“They (pigs) seem to have the ability to tell time, and (exhibit) negative anticipatory behaviours when they have to go into confinement for a long time,” said Marino, executive director of the U.S.-based The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy.

She said pigs experience fear, joy and happiness and have “very good” long and short-term memories.

“They are at least as emotionally complex as dogs and as psychologically complex as primates.”

Marino said it’s unclear how to equate a pig with humans but that “it sells pigs short to say they are as sophisticated as a human toddler — they are more complex than that…. They are at least as cognitively advanced as monkeys.”

“Yes, they (pigs) are persons,” she said, noting that not just a human is a person.
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The next court session will be happening this Thursday from 9-5 at the Ontario Court of Justice in Burlington. While court is in session, a vigil will be held outside of “Fearman’s Pork” slaughterhouse where Toronto Pig Save and other Save Movement activists will give the pigs water and love in their final moments, just as we have been doing for years, and will continue to do. Please join us for the peaceful rally that will take place outside the courthouse (meet at 8:45am) and/or in bearing witness to the beautiful baby pigs. In the meantime, please share the #pigtrial story far and wide along with the message that compassion is never a crime.