Like most mammals, pigs vocally express a lot of emotions such as joy, fear, frustration. To do this, they emit a whole battery of more or less high-pitched and more or less long vocalizations: barking, squeaking, screaming and grunting are all types of vocalizations that can be associated with positive or negative contexts. Grunts are the most used and yet the least understood. By deciphering them, scientists seek to translate the emotional state of pigs in order to better understand their perception of their environment and to adapt farming conditions so as to promote their welfare. In this study, ethologists aimed to accurately describe the grunts of piglets in different situations, and to measure the level of welfare provided by the relationship with humans.
Click here for original story, Piglets vocally indicate preference for their piglet friends over human conspecifics
Source: Phys.org