Missing you pig time

Far from being lazy, dirty and sweaty, pigs are actually house proud, affectionate and fond of the odd game of hide and seek, John Lewis-Stempel assures us

- John Lewis-Stempel

POOR old pigs. They don’t get a great billing from us humans, do they? We may have put Peppa on TV to children’s coos, but, mostly, we’re pejorative about porkers, scathing about swine. Here is a little of our insulting lexicon concerning Sus domesticus: pig-headed, eat like a pig, sweat like a pig, this place looks like a pigsty, as lazy as a pig…

George Orwell did porcines no favours, of course, making Old Major, Napoleon and Snowball, respectively, the Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky of his fable about Communistic evil, Animal Farm. Being Orwell, his choice of pig as totalitarian ruler of the farmyard was pawky (pun intended) and informed. Pigs are rather humanesque. Pigs are definitely clever. A duck as dictator would be risible; a 15½ stone, bright-pink Landrace piggy up on its back legs, leaning on a wall and peering over the top, looks as if it is lecturing. Like Lenin.

The humanness of pigs should never be underestimated. The pig so physiologically resembles us that it has been used in medical research for more than 30 years as a translational model. That is, if it works in a pig, it’s likely to work in humans.

Pigs, similarly to people, enjoy physical affection. Lavender, one of our Welsh pigs, a traditional breed, pens me every morning in the corner of the wood—where she and the herd live the year round—and only lets me go after I have tickled her neck. (A novel definition of ‘pork scratchings’.) Not a hardship, however, chatting with a pig as dawn rises up through the oaks. I’ll be more candid. Lavender is in love with me—and I do mean me, only me. She has girly eyes for me alone. Everybody else is ignored. (Yes, pigs can distinguish humans, by our morphology and by our scent. Obviously, I scrub up well— thank you, Dove soap—or perhaps I am simply pig handsome?)