These gamers are pigs. Literally, someone taught pigs to game.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," said the pigs in George Orwell's Beast Subcontract. It'due south unlikely that those pigs were referring to their video game prowess, but maybe they should have been. Scientists taught four pigs how to play video games in a recent written report (via the BBC). The results of the study suggest that even though they had to utilise their noses to play, the pigs are capable of playing joystick-operated games.

The pigs, named Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony, and Ivory, were trained to operate a joystick. The game involved the pigs doing the SIDE task, which involves using a joystick to motion a cursor to a target wall.

Pig Games Figure Source: Frontiers in Psychology

During the experiment, a food dispenser broke at i point. As a issue, the pigs couldn't be rewarded with nutrient for completing a job. Despite this, they continued to play while being encouraged by researchers.

While well-nigh gaming devices are designed to exist used with people'due south hands, the pigs had to use their noses. The study suggests that animals may benefit from touchscreens.

Limitations in the joystick methodology propose that future studies of the cognitive capacities of pigs and other domestic species may benefit from the employ of touchscreens or other avant-garde computer-interfaced technology.

The results show that the pigs performed "significantly above chance," which suggests that they weren't just randomly moving the joystick around.

Overall, all pigs performed significantly above adventure on ane-walled targets, which indicates that, to some extent, all acquired the association between the joystick and cursor movement. That the pigs accomplished the level of success they did on a task that was significantly outside their normal frame of reference [is] in itself remarkable, and indicative of their behavioral and cognitive flexibility. Their high level of social motivation to perform the chore was as well noteworthy.

You don't have to worry about pigs chirapsia your high score in your favorite game whatever fourth dimension shortly. The report notes that "despite performing above adventure on the SIDE job, even the pig that performed all-time did not approach the level attained by not–human primates that acquired the task later on a comparable number of trials."

In fact, none of the pigs met the criteria of the SIDE job. But to be fair to the pigs, the task was designed for animals with more than dexterity. In addition to having to utilize a joystick without hands, some of the pigs were also restricted by mobility.

The pigs' power for such manipulation was restricted to their normal range of head and neck movements. This limitation appeared particularly troublesome for the Yorkshire pigs whose larger size besides constrained their ability to reposition themselves as needed to contact targets located in the horizontal plane ... In fact, when faced with left or correct targets, the Yorkshire subjects were ofttimes observed to change their stance so that they were parallel to the estimator screen. This style, they could approach horizontal targets in the same way they did for those in the vertical plane."

Since the pigs already learned how to employ a joystick, maybe scientists could teach them to play Aroused Birds.