{"id":9391,"date":"2023-04-02T01:57:57","date_gmt":"2023-04-02T05:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dooneyscafe.com\/?p=9391"},"modified":"2023-04-02T01:57:57","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T05:57:57","slug":"the-sussex-variations-or-two-boars-ch-6-intelligence-personality-personhood-being-and-some-genuine-woo-woo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dooneyscafe.com\/the-sussex-variations-or-two-boars-ch-6-intelligence-personality-personhood-being-and-some-genuine-woo-woo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars (Ch. 6): Intelligence, Personality, Personhood, Being, and some genuine Woo-Woo"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Chapter Six: Intelligence, Personality, Personhood, Being, and some genuine Woo-Woo.<\/strong><\/p>\n Snow had fallen overnight, more than a foot. It seemed much deeper than that to me, but I couldn\u2019t have explained why. The visual softening of the Sussex downs? The resemblance to snowfalls in Northern British Columbia, which were often heavier and the cold more extreme? The important fact was that there had been enough snow to short-circuit the electric fences that separated the farm\u2019s main fields, which were not fences in the conventional sense but rather perimeter strands of electrified wire about sixteen inches from the ground with a current strong enough to shock a transgressing animal without harming it.<\/p>\n As electric fencing systems go today, it was rudimentary. This was 1962, well before the advent of casual computerization, and Ronald Surry, not an electrical engineer but a resourceful man with a knowledge of military trip-wire alarms, had jury-rigged it as an adjunct to conventional fencing, which he then allowed, out of overconfidence or the sloth of having too much to do, to fall into disrepair. At the time, I couldn\u2019t see why a hard rain wouldn\u2019t also short-circuit such a system, since the insulators that kept the strands of wire isolated were unprotected from the elements and barely functional to begin with. I considered asking Ronald about this, but I didn\u2019t, not wanting to appear to question his competence.<\/p>\n It\u2019s likely that the answer was complicated beyond what either of us had the leisure or inclination to think through: that the fences short-circuited often when it was wet, but that pigs have brains enough to stay out of the rain, and would choose the comfort of the shelter to testing an electric fence during a downpour. But a heavy snowfall? Here was novelty from the norms of both the farm and the world as it operated in East Sussex, and this is where porcine intelligence might have led the Landrace boar to do something unusual. Did this boar waken from a dream to venture out into the snowy night air, apprehend the beauty of the event along with its novelty, and then wander, lonely as a cloud and undeterred by mild electrical shocks, into the adjoining field? And only then, when his senses detected another male, return to the asshole male behavior that was instinctive to him?<\/p>\n Maybe so, and that\u2019s a fanciful notion that leads, well, nowhere. But since I\u2019m trying to get at serious matters by unconventional means, what does it hint at?<\/p>\n First of all, it suggests that pigs, including boars, even when their brains are completely clouded with testosterone, are intelligent. The common view is that pigs are more intelligent than dogs, but slightly less intelligent than the higher apes. Most other primates and a few rodents also have opposed thumbs with which to lead dexterity to deliberate manipulation, but they\u2019re still dumber than pigs and dogs.<\/p>\n