Similarities between pigs and humans are so great that pig research could lead to many gains in health knowledge for both mammals.
“Irrespective of the funding source, ag or biomedical, anything that helps us better understand pig biology is good,” said University of Illinois researcher Rodney Johnson.
“I believe studies that report on the basic biology of pigs have potential to someday affect production practices.”
Johnson, the director of the university’s division of nutritional sciences in animal science, has done research on newborn pigs to see what factors cause their brains to develop differently.
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He and his colleagues discovered that inadequate nutrition, stress and infection leave “fingerprints” in the structure of the developing brain that can later lead to future behaviour problems.
They studied pigs – exposing them to various situations and then conducting intelligence and memory tests– and found significant impacts from early influences.
The pig is useful for human brain research because its brain develops slightly before and slightly after birth. Human brains also develop before and after birth.
“We know that if something goes wrong during this developmental period, the brain can be permanently altered,” said Johnson.
“We believe that events occurring during this developmental period may underlie some of the behavioural problems that emerge later in life.”
Researchers have discovered that a viral infection during the brain’s development can reduce its ability to process information beyond immune system functioning.
Johnson said scientists have been forced to find new ways to test pigs because they interact with the world differently than test creatures such as mice.
Mice can be tested in mazes by putting picture clues on the walls, but pigs tend to keep their snouts to the ground, so they don’t notice the pictures.
But they are good at noticing colour differences, so researchers have been using different-coloured doors to reveal clues about what parts of the maze contain food.
Results from studies on how the immune system regulates the growth of pigs could help explain how prophylactic antibiotics promote growth.
