A new study reveals the importance of considering social behavior in animal management.
The Social Network of Pigs
Social networking isn’t just for people trying to connect on TikTok or Facebook. Researchers are analyzing the social networks of pigs to better understand how pig-to-pig interactions ultimately impact performance and well-being.
“Just like humans, anytime you put a group of animals in a confined space, even though they have plenty of resources, they’ll establish their own behaviors and hierarchy,” says Dan Hamilton, director of product performance at PIC. “Some of those interactions are positive, some are negative. It’s like putting your kids in the backseat of the car for too long. They may get a little bit antsy at each other after a while. Animals do the same.”
Scientists at the Roslin Institute and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), in collaboration with PIC and an international research team, have been examining how pigs associate with one another over time by using technology to analyze their proximity during social interactions.
Andrea Doeschl-Wilson, group leader in infection disease genetics and modeling at the Roslin Institute, says this highlights the power of AI in agriculture and emphasizes the importance of considering social behavior in animal management.
Digital Phenotyping Behavior Monitoring at PIC
Which Behavior is Best?
“We want to find out what we can learn from the behavior of the pig,” Hamilton says. “This will help us determine if we should change the way we manage them, the way we feed them, or even change the genetics we use so we have a pig that performs and is welfare friendly at the end of the day.”
In the first trial before the social network analysis trial, Hamilton says they determined if behavior traits were heritable. He says they were encouraged to see them come up as 20% to 40% heritable. To put it into perspective, traits the industry typically selects for like litter size are below 10% heritable, he says. Some growth traits the industry selects for are now 20% to 30% heritable, so being in the 20% to 40% heritability on behavior is exciting.
“We know we can change the direction on behavior if we objectively measure the right things,” Hamilton says. “But the question is, which traits would you want to select for? Do you want a pig that spends more time sleeping or a pig that spends more time at the feeder?”
Pigs eating at feeder – image: National Pork Board and the Pork Checkoff
He’s quick to add he doesn’t want to dictate that with his opinion. That’s another reason why researchers are working to gain a deeper understanding of pig behavior through social network analysis.
Pigs Have Cliques, Too
The study, conducted on a commercial pig breeding farm in the U.S., demonstrates how emerging technologies can be applied to modernize animal husbandry. An automated monitoring system tracked pigs housed in indoor pens, collecting data on individual animals using cameras and movement sensors to record the pigs’ posture and location in real time.
Through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and techniques to map animals’ interactions, researchers gained interesting insights into pigs’ social relationships.
“When you start to evaluate a pen of pigs, there’s always one pig that moves around more. He’s the agitator,” Hamilton says. “There’s another pig that always spends all his time in the feeder and pushes everybody else out. Those are just one-off observations, but social network analysis allows you to also know which pig is which, then tie that into their genetics.”
Findings revealed that as pigs spend more time together, their social interactions become more structured. Some pigs emerge as central figures within their groups, indicating the development of a social hierarchy.
Key indications of social connection, such as how central a pig was in the network or how connected it was to others, increased over time, suggesting that pigs gradually form more stable and structured social relationships as they grow. This highlights the dynamic nature of pig social structures, which were previously difficult to monitor at such detail and scale, researchers explained in a study published in Animals.
“As the farming industry continues to adopt smart technologies, the ability to analyze animal behavior at both the individual and group level represents a significant step forward.”
Andrea Doeschl-Wilson
Andrea Doeschl-Wilson
Reducing Stress Levels
Hamilton says these insights can help breeders and farmers better understand animal behavior and improve breeding and management practices. A deeper understanding of pigs’ social interactions can also aid in reducing stress-related behaviors, such as tail biting, a common health and welfare issue that can lead to major industry losses.
“We now have a tool to measure animal behavior, quantify it and put that data to use,” he says. “If you’ve got all these measurements being made by the second as the animal moves and interacts, it’s a huge data set. This is not something we’re going to sit down and work in an Excel spreadsheet to come up with an answer. You need a program to decipher that data using machine learning to come up with the next steps.”
The research demonstrates how data-driven approaches can support more informed decisions on breeding, housing and welfare strategies, the study explains.
“If you think about pork production over the past 20-30 years, it continues to evolve, but a lot of the traits that we measure are really the same,” Hamilton says. “The basic things like litter size, number weaned, pounds of pigs weaned, growth rate, efficiency and survivability are all important traits, but as we continue to push the envelope to improve welfare while improving efficiency and profitability, we need more traits to help with that.”
What Will Cameras Capture Next?
Hamilton believes the next step is to put more cameras in place to collect more data at nucleus, multiplication and commercial sites, so they can continue the data gathering at all life stages of the pig.
“Then we need to look at scenarios of factors we want to understand more to see if there’s a better way to manage or feed pigs,” he says. “I think we’re still early enough in the process that we’re highly encouraged we need to invest more, but we don’t have enough learnings to confirm the final result.”
PIC has been using camera vision for feet and leg selection. That technology is getting used in more farms every day, Hamilton adds. They are also using camera vision to determine body condition on sows, farrowing duration and more.
“There are a lot of projects in the works,” he says. “Some will be fruitful. Some may not. But everyone is excited about it. We’ve got a whole team of engineers and some good partners in the industry that are helping us bring this technology to fruition. It’s amazing how technology allows us to take these concepts from an idea to a result in a really short time. The hardest part is getting it commercialized, but we are making progress.”
This article was originally published on porkbusiness.com: When Pigs Click: Social Network Analysis Reveals New Findings About Animal Behavior
Author: Jennifer Shike
July 2025
