British scientists have developed a technology that will evaluate the emotional state of pigs based on their appearance.

Researchers have argued that pig expression can tell if they are happy or worried. Scientists are developing a tool to monitor individual pig snouts and alert farmers using their mobile phone about any problems with pigs' health and well-being - often pig stress is manifested before the symptoms of the disease become apparent. Pigs are known as very expressive and vocal animals. A previous study by Scottish Rural College (SRUC) in Midlothian showed that pigs can signal their intentions to other pigs using different snout expressions, and also make different sounds when experiencing pain or stress.

Dr Emma Baxter of SRUC said: “Early detection of pig health problems gives farmers the potential to improve animal welfare by quickly resolving any problems and applying individual treatment to individuals. This will reduce production costs by preventing the impact of health problems on productivity. ”“ By focusing on pig snouting, we hope to create a truly animal-centered welfare assessment technique in which the animal can “tell” us how it feels and how it perceives the environment Wednesday This allows us to understand both short-term emotional reactions and long-term individual “moods” of animals under our care, ”the doctor added.

Professor Melvin Smith of the UWE Bristol Machine Vision Center stated that their “work has already demonstrated 97 percent accuracy in snout recognition in pigs. The next step will be for the first time the study of the possibilities of using machine vision for the automatic recognition of snout expressions associated with the basic states of emotions.