David's Digest

According to todays Daily Mail a certain Dr Catherine Douglas of Newcastle University has been spending taxpayers money to see if pigs have emotions and could show optimism and pessimism. She has been teaching them to respond to different noises, then rewarding them with enriched environments, which include apples to indicate optimism and an empty plastic bag when they are pessimistic.

Apparently she's done similar experiments with cows in the past and claims to have discovered that they like to have names

She claims her work "answers important questions about animal welfare".

Sorry Catherine. I believe I am as anxious to ensure farm animals are kept in the best possible conditions as you are. But you are going over the top to suggest they have the emotions you attribute to them.

Your pigs and cows are just responding to the food you are giving them. Their emotions are controlled by their desire for food and any optimism they exhibit is associated with seeing the bucket (or in your case the apple) that you are about to feed it with. Even the fact that you give it the food in an enriched environment is secondary to its desire to eat.

That is not to say pigs are unintelligent or cannot be trained. Clearly they can. But you have fallen into the trap of attributing human emotions to animals and that is unworthy of your university education and the taxpayers money that has been wasted on it at a time of national financial stringency.