10/04/2026
Domestic pigs taught to use a joystick at Purdue University in 2021 moved a cursor to a target on a screen for a food reward. They learned the task faster than some primates tested on the same protocol. Pigs recognize themselves in mirrors, a cognitive benchmark that only great apes, dolphins, elephants, and magpies have passed.
They distinguish between individual humans and remember which ones fed them and which ones did not. The cognitive research on domestic pigs has been running for decades and the conclusion is consistent: pigs are among the most intelligent mammals tested in a laboratory setting, comparable to a human child of roughly three years old.
The feral version of that animal is what wildlife managers across the southern United States are trying to trap relentlessly.
A feral hog that has been shot at once shifts to nocturnal activity and stays nocturnal permanently. In areas with no hunting pressure, feral hogs are diurnal, active during the day with peaks in early morning and late afternoon. The moment sustained human pressure arrives, the entire sounder goes dark. They feed at night, bed in dense cover during the day, and avoid open ground where they were previously disturbed. The shift is not seasonal. It is learned, retained, and passed to the next generation through social behavior.
Trapping protocols published by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension read less like wildlife management and more like instructions for deceiving an intelligent adversary. Build the trap. Do not set it. Bait the outside for a week. Move the bait to the threshold. Move it inside. Wait until every hog in the sounder is entering the trap comfortably, documented by camera, before setting the trigger. If you set it too early and catch three out of ten, the seven that escaped will never enter a trap at that site again. Billy Higginbotham, the extension wildlife specialist who wrote the protocol, says the process can take weeks and cannot be rushed.
The reason for the patience is what happens when it fails. A hog that trips a gate and escapes does not simply avoid that trap. It avoids structures that resemble that trap. It avoids the smell of the metal. It avoids the disturbed ground around the site. And because feral hogs are social animals that travel and feed in groups, the educated hog teaches the rest of the sounder through its own avoidance behavior. The sounder follows the experienced animal away from the site the way it follows her to food. One failed trapping attempt can render an entire area untrapable for months.
John Mayer, a wildlife biologist at the Savannah River National Laboratory who has studied feral hogs for over 30 years and co-authored the definitive reference text on the species, described them as more difficult to study than other hoofed animals because of their intelligence, shyness, and vigilance combined with an acute sense of smell and hearing. Their sense of smell can detect odors up to seven miles away and food sources as deep as 25 feet underground.
Kentucky banned feral hog hunting outright in 2024 because the state's wildlife division found that recreational shooting was directly undermining its eradication program. Every missed shot, every failed trap, every half-effort by a weekend hunter who wounds one and scatters the rest produces a sounder of hogs that is harder to remove than the one that existed before anyone tried.
The animal that scores higher than a dog on cognitive tests is being managed by people who often underestimate it on the first attempt and do not get a second one.
Image is for illustration purposes only
Source: Croney et al. (2021), Frontiers in Psychology, Purdue University / Mayer and Brisbin (2009), Wild Pigs: Biology, Damage, Control Techniques and Management / Texas A&M AgriLife Extension / Billy Higginbotham, Texas A&M / Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife / Grand View Outdoors
