Misa has been pretty adept at picking up relevant words and from her reactions I am pretty sure she recognizes 'no,' 'treat,' 'lettuce,' and 'piggie o'clock' (which is what we call the time when we put down the snacks and let the pigs do a supervised free roam every evening. Saying 'piggie o'clock' at the wrong time of day induces excitement followed by profound disappointment.) The other day I learned that she also knows the word 'water,' since I was going out in a hurry, passed the cage and saw her standing attentively next to the empty water bottle, and called to my husband to please get some water for the pigs, causing Misa to get very vocal when she heard the magic word!
We've had some pretty smart pigs before, including Linney who understood 'no,' could popcorn on cue as her little trick, and was really good at puzzling out the environment and learning to go over/under/through barriers blocking not-for-pig areas, but Misa has the best word count of any of our pigs. She may know her name too, but it might be the tone of voice we're using making her excited. She gets excited with the other words no matter what tone of voice we use, and she does stop what she's doing (albeit it sometimes just until it looks like we're not watching anymore) for 'no.' Typically she will stop at 'no,' run a big circle around the room, and come back to what she was doing last time. But hey, she did stop momentarily so we're counting it!
We've had some pretty smart pigs before, including Linney who understood 'no,' could popcorn on cue as her little trick, and was really good at puzzling out the environment and learning to go over/under/through barriers blocking not-for-pig areas, but Misa has the best word count of any of our pigs. She may know her name too, but it might be the tone of voice we're using making her excited. She gets excited with the other words no matter what tone of voice we use, and she does stop what she's doing (albeit it sometimes just until it looks like we're not watching anymore) for 'no.' Typically she will stop at 'no,' run a big circle around the room, and come back to what she was doing last time. But hey, she did stop momentarily so we're counting it!
Yes, piggies are clever and can generalise learning really well. They can judge us, for instance, how far we can reach when they are trying to avoid being picked up ❤
