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Many Hands Network joins like-minded, compassionate people who want to help heal our global home. If you are concerned about the state of our world, check out the Many Hand Network pages regularly to stay informed on human rights, animal welfare and environmental issues, and add your voice and effort to those who would make our planet a safer, peaceful and more just world, and home, to all species. |
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“Even a small star shines in the darkness.” - Finnish Proverb |
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With all beings and all things we shall be as relatives.” - Sioux Indian Proverb |
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Fur—Fashion Statement or Cruel Vanity |
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True stories and amazing images to make you smile. |
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“The Natural History of ‘Babe’ - the Pig”, includes excerpts from “In the Company of Animals” by James Serpell, “The Source of Life”, Choice magazine, fascinating information on porcine ancestry, modern conditions, and the mystical Druid tradition and porcine connection to Goddess worship. |
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“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." |
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Most people don't have the privilege of getting to know a pig. For most of us, the thought of pigs conjure images of dirty, greedy animals living in their own waste. We couldn't be more wrong! Pigs don't perspire, and so wallow in mud to keep themselves cool. They are naturally very clean animals and, if given the choice, they prefer to cool themselves down in fresh water. When in a natural environment, pigs build communal nests and toilet areas away from their sleeping area.
Smarter than Dogs? Pigs are remarkably intelligent creatures thought by many to be smarter than dogs. They can be trained to respond to simple voice commands, and are easily toilet trained. Studies have revealed that pigs have a long memory and are able to focus on specific tasks even better than some primates. Research conducted at Bristol University found that pigs are cleverly competitive with other members of their herd, and to avoid confrontation will wait until nobody is looking to sneak away hidden food. "This sort of behaviour suggests that pigs can compete with each other in quite complex and 'cerebral' ways," says Dr Mendl of Bristol University. Since most people are not that familiar with pigs, you may be surprised to learn that they dream, recognize their names, play video games more effectively than some primates, and lead social lives of a complexity previously observed only in primates. People who run animal sanctuaries often describe pigs with human characteristics, because they’ve learned that, like humans, pigs enjoy listening to music, playing with soccer balls, and getting massages.
"Pigs have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds."
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Playful Pigs
Pigs develop highly complex social structures and form strong bonds with other members of their group. At the age of around 3 weeks, piglets begin to play with other piglets, and for the majority of weeks thereafter will interact more with each other than with other members of their herd. It is during this time of play and interaction that strong bonds are formed, often lasting the duration of their lives. Check out clever Nelly the Pig—http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgLfuARCe5k
Mother and Child
About 24 hours before giving birth, pregnant mother pigs will temporarily leave the social group in order to collect branches and soft material to build a nest. Shortly after giving birth, piglets will often move to the head of the sow and touch noses, vocalise, and then begin suckling. The mother will stay isolated in her nest with her newborns for the first week, which allows her to develop a strong bond between herself and her piglets. Mothers are known to 'sing' to their offspring, which is believed to inform them when her milk is flowing.
“All Animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. – George Orwell Animal Farm
Excerpt from “In the Company of Animals” by James Serpell (Research associate in animal behaviour at the University of Cambridge)
By definition, domestic animals are subservient to the will of humanity and, for the majority of species involved, this loss of independence had some fairly devastating long-term consequences.
Take, for example, the unfortunate case of the domestic pig. The Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa), from which the pig is descended, is an intelligent, sociable mammal. It is a creature of open forests and woodland. The typical wild boar social group consists of a matriarchal herd or `sounder’ containing perhaps, half a dozen closely related females and their offspring. Sub-adult males sometimes form bachelor herds, while mature males are generally solitary. Herds generally roam over an area of about 25 hectares but not exclusively territorial. Wild boars are most active during the daytime and around dusk, and spend much of their time foraging for food. They are omnivorous and feed on a wide variety of plants, including fungi, ferns, leaves, roots, bulbs and fruits, as well as on insects, insect larvae and earthworms, and small invertebrates such as mice and frogs. Much of this food is obtained by rooting around in the soil with the bony and muscular snout. Foraging parties are noisy, maintaining a continual, conversational exchange of grunts, squeals and chirps. At night these animals sleep en masse in large dens or nests. They are also extremely partial to wallowing in mud, an activity which helps to keep them cool in warm weather and rids the skin of external parasites. They are naturally clean animals, and deposit their excrement in specific dunging areas. In the Northern Hemisphere, mating takes place in the autumn. The boar courts the sow by displaying and `chanting’ and by nudging her with his snout. He also champs his jaws together to produce salivary foam. The boar possess lip glands which secrete a sexual scent or pheromone the smell of which is highly stimulating to the sow. The production of salivary foam probably helps to disperse this pheromone. The boar also tests the receptivity of the sow by placing his chin repeatedly on her rump. If the female is receptive, she will `stand’ for the boar to permit mounting and copulation. Farrowing takes place the flowing spring. As she approaches term, the sow leaves the herd and constructs a large nest of twigs, leaf litter and dried grasses in which she gives birth to up to 12 piglets. The piglets remain in the nest for about ten days before following their mother on her foraging expeditions and, eventually rejoining the matriarchal sounder. At this age the piglets are playful and intensely curious. Although they have an exaggerated reputation for ferocity, wild boars obtained as piglets are easily tamed and make charming pets, almost dog-like in their affection and loyalty.
The life of the modern domestic pig stands in sharp contrast. In the West, methods of farming pigs have been (moving) towards increased intensification. Gone are the days of the humble farmyard pig, contentedly rooting in the soil for various edibles or foraging in the woods for beechmast. Gone are the days of the mud-wallow or the appetizing bucket of swill - the leavings of the farmer’s kitchen and other surplus farm produce. The modern pig is born and raised in artificial confinement and has been reduced to the status of a strictly utilitarian object; a thing for producing meat and bacon.
From the moment of conception, the intensively farmed domestic pig is regulated and controlled, and rarely permitted to engage in any of the natural activities. About a week from giving birth, the sow is herded into a farrowing crate, a narrow steel cage in which she is able to stand up or lie down but is impeded from making any other movements. Despite this, sows engage in various stereotyped activities which have been interpreted as frustrated attempts at nest-building. These are accompanied by clear signs of distress. (These farrowing methods have been) justified by the desire to reduce piglet mortality, particularly by preventing sows lying or stepping on their young. In reality, the differences in piglet mortality between crates and other, more open farming farrowing systems may be quite small. The newborn piglets are allowed to suckle from their incarcerated mother for anything from a few hours to several weeks, depending on the rearing methods employed. (A short period of suckling is essential in order to give the piglets the opportunity to acquire passive immunity to certain diseases from their mother’s milk and colostrums.) Modern textbooks on pig-rearing recommend removing the piglets from the mother as soon as possible – within 12 – 36 hours after birth. This is considered advantageous to producers as the sows deprived of their piglets stop lactating and become sexually receptive again more quickly. It is customary to carry out a list of routine operations on the piglets after they are born - their incisor teeth are clipped, their tails are docked, their ears are notched for identification and the males are castrated. No anaesthesia is employed during their operations.
In the most intensive systems the piglets are generally isolated within hours of birth in small individual cages which are stacked, row upon row, in tiers. Nourishment is supplied in the form of regular, controlled doses of liquid food at roughly hourly intervals. “To get an idea of the totally impersonal and technological nature of this pig-rearing process, it is worth quoting verbatim from a major textbook on the subject: In most refined systems, each piglet is contained within its own isolated space….There is no direct contact between piglet environments and the surrounding room environment,…individual piglet places are constructed of open wire mesh cages.”
At 7 to 14 days, the piglets are moved again to new quarters where they are housed in groups in slightly larger cages. In these cramped and boring conditions the young animals are including to engage in what are euphemistically termed `social vices’; chiefly biting or sucking each other’s navels, tails and ears, apparently out of sheer frustration (publisher’s note: or maybe this behaviour is due to the piglets missing their bond with their mother?) To combat this behaviour, it is recommended to producers that the piglets be kept hot and therefore lethargic, in near darkness and free from sudden disturbances. Pigs reared in these artificially confined conditions are delicate and notoriously susceptible to stress. Sudden noises or bright lights make them frightened and potentially aggressive towards each other. They may also induce a condition known as PSS or `porcine stress syndrome’, an affliction characterized by extreme stress, rigidity, blotchy skin, panting, anxiety and often sudden death. PSS can strike factory-farmed pigs at any age, but it is particularly galling to the producer when the pigs are close to market weight after several months’ investment of food.
Once onto solid food, the weanling piglets or `weaners’ are grown on in small groups in pens until they reach slaughtering weight at around six to eight months of age. For ease of cleaning, the pens have concrete or slatted metal floors, and no bedding is provided. Given the choice, pigs prefer to stand or lie on sand or straw bedding, and foot deformities and lameness is common in animals raised on hard floors without access to softer bedding areas. Aggression and social vices are prevalent in the unpleasant and overcrowded conditions of the growing and finishing pens so, once again, the pigs are kept in total or partial darkness for most of the time.
Finally, once they reach a suitable size and weight, the pigs are subjected to the terrifying ordeal of transportation and slaughter. One day, after months of inactivity, boredom and frustration, the pigs are herded out of their pens and crammed, like so many sardines, into a livestock truck where they spend hours or even days, virtually unable to move and without food or water. Those which are understandably frightened and uncooperative are not dealt with lightly. Handlers are generally in a hurry and they are frequently (resort) to undue violence, usually administered through the toe of a boot, a stick or a club, or often nowadays, through the tip of an electric prod. Pigs are maimed, bruised and killed during transport. In the words of Peter Singer:
“Animals that die in transit do not die easy deaths. They freeze to death in winter and collapse from thirst and heat exhaustion in summer. They die, lying unattended in stockyards, from injuries sustained in falling off a slippery loading ramp. They suffocate when other animals pile on top of them in an overcrowded, badly loaded truck. They die from thirst or starve when careless stockmen forget to give them water or food. And they die from the sheer stress of the whole terrifying experience, fro which nothing in their lives has given them the slightest preparation.”
At the abattoir (slaughterhouse), pigs exhibit every symptom of abject error; screaming and jostling one another in a nightmare of blind panic. Ideally death is relatively quick and painless; the animal being stunned by an electric current or a captive-bolt pistol before its throat is cut. Unfortunately, the circumstances of slaughtering are not always so humane. If stunning is performed inexpertly, the animal probably suffers more than it would from having its throat cut. One author describes the situation in a nutshell when slaughtering is `done well by caring people, pain and misery can be minimized; done badly, untold horrors will be routine.’ (R. North, The Animals Report Penguin Books)
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The pigs that go to slaughter are, arguable, the lucky ones. A few unfortunate sows and even fewer boars may be selected for breeding. Nowadays, to discourage aggression, breeding sows are generally kept isolated in individual narrow pens in which they are unable to turn round. They remain in these pens until they come into oestrus or `on heat’, an event which is often detected by sitting on the sow’s back or rump when, like the wild boar sow, she will exhibit the `standing’ reflex. As soon as she signals her condition in this way, she is herded quickly out of her pen and into one of the boat pens. If the sow is frightened or shows signs of being coy and uncooperative, the mating procedure becomes nasty and brutish. Pig-breeding is concerned with just two aims: to increase the rate of piglet production, and to reduce the non-productive periods of the sow – the periods during which she is consuming valuable food, but not actually gestation or suckling piglets. As one textbook bluntly puts it, `The sow has one commercial purpose in life…to produce weaners.’ (continued on next page)
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HUMAN BEINGS ARE APPARENTLY THE MOST CIVILIZED, INTELLIGENT SPECIES ON THE PLANET. HERE WE HAVE A HUMAN TAKING PLEASURE IN THE KILLING OF SENTIENT ANIMALS—IN THIS CASE—PIGS, AND SHOWING OFF THEIR DEAD TROPHIES |
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HERE WE HAVE HUMANS USING DOGS TO TEAR AN INNOCENT, THINKING FEELING ANIMAL, A PIG, TO DEATH! |
