"I told you pigs are smart."
— Gussy, Charlotte's Web
Pigs are smart. It's one of the Stock Animal Facts. Biologists have speculated that the average pig is slightly more intelligent than the average dog, with some studies suggesting that they may be as intelligent as a four to six-year-old child. Fiction has latched onto this and exaggerated it, leading to the Animal Stereotype of the Brainy Pig.
If the pig is anthropomorphic or can talk, expect them to have Geek Physiques and be scientifically-minded, philosophical, Big Fun, or a combination thereof. If they're just a normal pig or a Housepet Pig, they might show an understanding of human languages, or be able to do amazing tricks.
Usually, the Brainy Pig will be portrayed sympathetically, though they may combine the trope with Sinister Swine and be a deceptive schemer or an Insufferable Genius. Though rare, if they have an occupation that doesn't involve their knowledge, they have a chance of being a Police Pig. The Brainy Pig is less likely than less intelligent pigs to be a Messy Pig, Perverted Pig, or Gluttonous Pig, though it can happen. See Full-Boar Action for another trope about pigs and Cunning Like a Fox, Clever Crows, Intelligent Primate, Elephants Never Forget, Cerebral Cephalopod, and The Owl-Knowing One for other animals stereotyped as intelligent. Contrast Fat Idiot.
Examples:
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Anime
- Doraemon: Nobita and the Spiral City is set in a planet of Living Toys, the leader being an intelligent stuffed pig named Pibo who is elected mayor and is in charge of development, infrastructure, politics and most major operations. He's really good at his job, too.
- The Seven Deadly Sins gives us the sorceress Merlin, known as the Boar Sin of Gluttony. However, her appetite is for knowledge rather than food, and she is easily the most knowledgeable of the sins. She went so far as to use magic to halt her own aging so that she would have all the time in the world to conduct experiments and continue amassing knowledge.
Advertising
- An advertisement
for Lloyds Bank had a talking pig with an exaggeratedly refined accent and a talent for raconteuring (though it still found itself in need of the bank's financial advice).
Audio Dramas
- Year Of The Pig: Toby The Sapient Pig may be a delusional, gluttonous recluse, but he's a delusional, gluttonous recluse who can apparently predict the future. (And he will correct your grammar while he's at it.)
Comic Books
- In IDW Publishing's Beast Wars comics, Razorbeast the wild boar was the primary leader of the Maximal forces that opposed Magmatron, depicted as being tenacious and resourceful. Over the course of the comic, he's shown to be a cunning leader and a skilled fighter who defeats opponents stronger than he is through use of clever tactics.
- In the Italian comic Lupo Alberto, Alcide the pig is the McKenzie Farm's resident philosopher and most intelligent resident, and is often the Only Sane Man due having more common sense than most other characters, hence Moses, the dog and farm's leader, leaving him in charge whenever he has to leave for some commission. Sadly, this says more about the other residents than about him, often getting involved in the others' antics.
Comic Strips
- In a Pearls Before Swine strip, Rat attempts to invoke this trope when a butcher tries to charge him for Pig, claiming he's a "thinking pig", not an "eating pig". It doesn't work.
- Orson from U.S. Acres is portrayed as a smart pig who loves to read. He is also very helpful to his friends and often gives advice to them.
Films — Animation
- The Lion King has Pumbaa, the warthog. He can be a little naive (and perhaps a tad gullible, as well) from time to time, but make no mistake, he's much smarter than he seems.note
- Case in point: When wondering about the identity of the stars, after Timon gives the totally bogus explanation of their being fireflies that somehow got stuck in the sky, Pumbaa states, "I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away." And, as anyone with at least a passing knowledge of astronomy knows, he's spot on, if not for the fact that stars are primarily composed of plasma, not gas.note
- Also, in the "Find Out Why" short films from Disney's "One Saturday Morning" block, Timon and Pumbaa answer science-related questions. Timon, of course, comes up with some absolutely ridiculous answers (e.g., lightning coming from the clouds taking flash photography, pandas not living in the desert because they're scared of cacti, or sneezing being the result of the eruption of miniature volcanoes in people's nostrils), but Pumbaa provides the correct information.
- Hamm from the Toy Story films, despite being a toy, often acts as a know-it-all. He is very knowledgeable on many things outside Andy's room.
- Rosita in Sing has hints of this. She whips up a complex Rube Goldberg Device overnight to take over her daily routine while she's off at rehearsal, and near the end she also oversees the reconstruction of the stage. Other pigs in the film, Gunter and Norman, aren't shown to be unusually intelligent, although Gunter does write the script for the play in the sequel.
Films — Live-Action
- In Babe, just as in the original book, a piglet learns to round up sheep like a sheepdog.
- Discussed in Charlotte's Web (2006). Gussy the goose says that pigs are smart, but one of the cows says that they aren't. Later, when Wilbur tricks the farmers, Gussy says to her mate, Golly, "I told you pigs are smart". Wilbur himself doesn't ever seem particularly smart, but he's not dumb either.
- Zigzagged in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang. The piglets do synchronized swimming and climb trees, but that was because McPhee put a spell on them. The guy who buys them claims that he knew a pig who could play Scrabble and another who could count to ten in French. He turns out to be joking for the last one, but he admits that pigs are clever animals.
Jokes
- A tourist stays the night at a farm and notices a pig hobbling on three legs. He asks the farmer about it, who says "Well, that's about the smartest hog I've ever seen! Why, just a few weeks back, the barn caught fire while we were all sleeping. This pig broke out of his pen, got all the livestock outside, and then came to wake me up, even bringing me the phone so I could call the firemen!" The tourist says it's amazing, considering the pig had lost a leg in that fire. The farmer says "Oh no, none of the animals were harmed at all. But a pig that smart, well, you can't just eat it all at once!"
Literature
- Ace: The Very Important Pig features Babe's descendant Ace, who can understand human speech, watches television (choosing the best programs personally), and ends up becoming a TV star himself.
- Animal Farm features a decidedly dark take on this trope. The pigs, as the most intelligent animals on the farm, declare themselves to be the new government after kicking out their former human masters. Over the course of the story, however, one particular pig named Napoleon (a stand-in for Josef Stalin) becomes a power-hungry dictator who rules the farm with an iron fist, with the remaining swine serving as his closest allies. These pigs, serving as stand ins for the founders of the Soviet Union, stand out:
- Old Major is the one with the idea of kicking out the tyrannical farmer, so he inspires everyone else. He represents Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
- Snowball is able to outsmart humans in terms of strategy and form the political structure of the Animal Farm. He represents Leon Trotsky.
- Napoleon himself is manipulative and knows to surround himself with propagandists and enforcers, as well as to trade with humans. As mentioned above, he represents Josef Stalin.
- Squealer might lack leadership skills, but he is a skilled propagandist. He represents Vyacheslav Molotov.
- A Philip K. Dick story, Beyond Lies The Wub has the titular creature, a Martian animal that looks like a very fat pig, sold to starving astronauts by the "natives". The Wub is sapient, and has Psychic Powers that allow it to talk to humans (or anyone else) and engage in scholarly discourse by tapping into the collective unconscious of its interlocutors. These powers also allow it to take over the body of the captain, who eats it, with the implication that this is their secret defense mechanism against predation.
- A Bunch of Munsch: In "Pigs", the titular pigs can dance, sing, and read. In fact, the whole moral is that pigs are smarter than they seem.
- In Clever Duck, there are six pigs: the sows Mrs. Chubby, Mrs. Tubby, Mrs. Stout, Mrs. Portly, Mrs. O'Bese, and the boar. They're very smart, but unfortunately they're also pompous, viewing the other farm animals as "ignoramuses".
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In "The Long Haul", the Heffleys accidentally winding up adopting a piglet. The piglet turns out to be very smart; he can use the bathroom better than Greg can, and in the next book, "Old School", he even learns to walk on his hind legs, use the TV remote, and communicate with Manny's See-n-Say.
- The Roald Dahl book Dirty Beasts has a pig who becomes intelligent enough to learn why he's being bred at a farm; to be cooked and eaten. He decides to eat the farmer before that can happen.
- Freddy the Pig was the main character in a series of books by Walter R. Brooks. Although all the animals on the farm can speak, Freddy is quite intellectual and successfully tries his hand at a number of different jobs including detective, politician, pilot, newspaper editor, stage magician, and poet.
- In Lady Lollipop, a Spoiled Brat princess wants a pig for her birthday, and she gets one, named Lollipop. Lollipop is a very clever pig; she can do tricks like a dog, she learns commands very quickly, and she even has her own code; doing a deep grunt for "no", a high grunt for "yes", etc.
- Martins Mice: The pig is the one animal on the farm who Martin goes to for advice, and he's very intellectual and knowledgeable.
- Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle features Lester, a bipedal pig trained in etiquette used to serve as an example for children with poor table manners.
- Oryx and Crake has "pigoons", human-pig chimeras developed for organ transplants, as one of several genetically engineered animals that went feral after the apocalypse. After observing a herd of them Snowman is downright terrified of them and speculates that they have human brain cells. The third book confirms that they're basically sapient, and Gardeners and Crakers form an alliance with them.
- In the Robert Munsch book Pigs, Megan's father warns her not to keep the pigs' gate open because "pigs are smarter than you think". Not believing this, Megan opens the gate and learns the hard way that he was right; the pigs run around and cause havoc. The Spoof Aesop is indeed "pigs are smarter than you think".
- Secrets of the Silent Witch: The titular witch has a recurring dream that acts as her "happy place" featuring pigs singing a song about a pig herder's growing pig herd. The entire song is based on a Fibonacci sequence, which ties into the Pigs' curly tail which itself represents such a sequence.
- The Sheep-Pig features Babe, a pig who is raised by a sheepdog and becomes even more skilled at herding the sheep than her.
- The Tale of Mucky Mable: In it, the pig is smart enough to be able to use utensils and respond to human commands, which leads to it being mistaken for Mable by her clueless parents.
- The Three Little Pigs: Averted for the pigs who make their houses out of straw and sticks, and some adaptations will have them be straight-up stupid, inverting the trope. The pig who builds the brick house is definitely the most sensible, so he's at least a downplayed example, but some adaptations play it straight and have him be smart and strategic.
- Tuskers plays this for horror, with a genetically-engineered breed of super-smart javelinas (not technically pigs, but closely related) rampaging through a small Arizona desert town. Their intelligence makes them more than a match for the local human population.
Live-Action TV
- Green Acres: Arnold Ziffel is possibly the Trope Codifier. A Chester White pig adopted by the childless Fred and Doris Ziffel, Arnold displays human intelligence and is treated as an upstanding citizen of Hooterville. He understands English and watches the CBS Evening News to keep up with the issues, attends the local grade school (and is an outstanding student), and can beat anyone in town at checkers. Arnold is also artistically talented: he is working on a novel, he plays the piano, and he is an accomplished abstract painter, whose piece titled "Nude at a Filling Station" wins first prize out of two thousand entries in a student art contest.
Mythology
- In Chinese Mythology, people born in the Year of the Pig are generally seen as lucky, since they're Brilliant, but Lazy: a pig's only job is to eat and get fat. Yes, they get eaten in the end - but so do several other creatures in the zodiac, and of the all the domesticated animals, the Pig is the only one that doesn't have to work hard to earn their keep first. In terms of return on investment, the Pig definitely comes first.
Puppet Shows
- The Muppet Show, on "Pigs in Space", features the ubiquitous Dr. Julius Strangepork, a pig scientist.
Video Games
- Donkey Kong: Professor Chops, debuting in Donkey Kong Country Returns, is an anthropomorphic pig with Nerd Glasses that assists the Kongs by explaining the game mechanics and marking the checkpoints. He is also seemingly one of the only animals alongside the Kongs who are immune to the Tiki Tribe’s mind control.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- In early Zelda games like The Legend of Zelda I, Big Bad Ganon was a cunning Sorcerous Overlord in the form of a humanoid boar demon that ruled over other humanoid beast monsters like the canine moblins, leonine Lynels and fish-like River Zora due to his intellect.
- Inverted in later The Legend of Zelda games, where recurring Big Bad Ganondorf is a cunning Sorcerous Overlord, but his beast form Ganon is almost always a raging, primal giant boar or Pig Man who relies solely on brute strength (in the The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games, this was because the ritual required for his resurrection had been botched).
- Starting from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Moblins started often being depicted as pig monsters like Ganon. Whilst Moblin tech varies between using advanced submarines or making wooden forts, they are still one of the few enemies to show any signs of civilization at all.
- Mother 3 features Einswine, an enemy consisting of a pig with a cybernetically-enhanced brain. Tying in with the series' use of psychic powers in lieu of magic, Einswines primarily focus on PSI attacks, with comparatively low physical strength and HP.
- Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire introduces Spoink and Grumpig, two highly-intelligent Psychic-type pig Pokémon who are themed around the proverb about "casting pearls before swine"— turning said pearls into literal pearls of wisdom carried around by the Pokémon.
- Animal Crossing: Cobb is a pig villager with an affinity for science and learning. He's the only villager with the Jock personality to have the "education" hobby, his house is full of books and fossils or is a straight-up Mad Scientist Laboratory. His home request in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is "a secret research lab", he wears Opaque Nerd Glasses, and his life goal is to become a teacher. In fact, his Japanese name is Hakase (the Japanese equivalent of "Ph.D."), furthering his professorial image. To further drive the point home, his picture in Animal Crossing: New Horizons has him wearing a Labcoat of Science and Medicine and the background appears to be laboratory of some kind.
Web Videos
- Empires SMP Season 2: Dirk the pig from Animalia is, according to Lizzie, one of the most intelligent members of the Critter Council and likes carrots, potatoes, and theoretical physics.
- Technoblade is often associated with pigs, as his main Minecraft skin is a pre-1.16 Pig Man in Requisite Royal Regalia. He is also known to be very clever and strategic in PVP fights.
Western Animation
- Downplayed for Ben from 3rd & Bird. He's not particularly intelligent, but he speaks in a refined, eloquent way.
- Arthur: In "Sue Ellen Vegges Out", Sue Ellen befriends a pig named Sally, who can do tricks, jump through hoops, and take a bow. Sue Ellen winds up enjoying her time with Sally so much that it leads her to become vegetarian.
- Pig from The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales is the Only Sane Man who serves as the voice of reason, but is ignored by his dimwitted friends Duck and Rabbit.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog: Played with in "Heads Of Beef." Courage is terrified by Jean Bon, a massive pig who runs a hamburger diner and appears to serve up his customers as meals. In the end, it turns out Jean and his wife (also a pig) create edible meat sculptures inspired by people they meet; one "victim" even offers to buy his.
- Played with in Disenchantment, where Prince Merkimer swaps bodies with a pig as the result of a spell gone wrong. On the one hand, Merkimer retains his intelligence while in pig form, which doesn't help him too much as he was already a royal dunce back when he was still human. On the other hand, the pig whose mind ended up in his body turns out to be an evil mastermind who successfully steals Merkimer's identity and overthrows his royal parents.
- Mentioned in an episode of Freakazoid! when Cosgrove does his usual schtick of interrupting the action to invite Freakazoid to an unrelated activity, in this case asking Freakazoid if he wants to see a bear riding a motorcycle. Cut to them at an outdoor circus watching a bear riding in circles around a small ring (helmet and all).
Freakazoid: That bear is pretty good!
Cosgrove: Pigs are smarter than bears, but they can't ride motorcycles. - Garfield and Friends: Orson from the "U.S. Acres" segments, much like his comic strip counterpart, is a fairly-intelligent and well-read pig. He's usually the voice of reason in contrast to his friends' wacky antics.
- In the Gravity Falls episode "Little Gift Shop of Horrors", the segment "Abaconings" invokes this trope. Waddles the pig eats a substance that causes him to become very intelligent, to the point in which he even gains the ability to build inventions. However, at the end of the story he realizes that he'd rather spend time with his friend/owner Mabel, and decides to reverse the effects of the substance.
- Zigzagged in Invader Zim; while pigs, like all other animals, are portrayed as disgusting and filthy, there are a few examples: the pig in "Germs" is implied to know how to ride a motorcycle and Shadowhog, an anthropomorpic pig from "Gaz, Taster of Pork", can use his hooves as fingers, play video games, do ballet, and is smart enough to use the bathroom in an area that is separate from his palace.
- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Downplayed. Pig mutes are unable to speak, and thus Wolf initially considers them food, but are capable of understanding words and orders. Mandu in particular is shown to be fairly intelligent, if a bit simplistic.
- Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness: The recurring villain Taotie is a warthog and a Gadgeteer Genius.
- The Legend of Zelda (1989): Just like the games it was adapted from, Ganon is a boar monster with magical powers that rules a civilization of monsters and endangers the Kingdom of Hyrule with his cunning, but vile plots to take over. One episode had Ganon's monsters revolt against Ganon, only to find out that the boar demons leadership was what kept them together.
- Looney Tunes:
- Porky Pig is often shown as a little more intelligent and sensible than most other characters and so is usually portrayed as the Straight Man, particularly when he's paired with Daffy Duck.
- "The Windblown Hare" was a take on the three little pigs. Said pigs were guile conmen who successfully duped Bugs Bunny into buying their houses just before the Big Bad Wolf was to blow them down.
- Downplayed in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh with Piglet. Piglet isn't inherently smarter than any of the other characters but often he tends to be overshadowed whenever he tries to come up with an idea or thought. Sometimes though, Piglet is the one to recognize details the other characters overlook, especially whenever his fear doesn't get the better of him.
- Played straight when it comes to Piglet's Big Movie when Piglet tends to be the smartest when it comes to solving problems due to his Adaptational Heroism.
- Peppa Pig: The main characters are anthropomorphic pigs that are usually of average intelligence, however:
- Downplayed for George. His first word is said to have been "dinosaur", hinting at his interest in paleontology, but other than that he's mainly a normal toddler.
- Zigzagged for Daddy Pig. On the one hand, he's accident-prone and often claims to be an expert on things he doesn't know squat about. On the other hand, he's implied to be an engineer and has extreme DIY skills.
- Regular Show: Leroy (or Applesauce, as Benson calls him) is a cute little pig who used to be in the most successful bank robbing duo in the country, and he was the brains of every heist.
- The Simpsons: Plopper, although heavily downplayed does still have slightly above average intelligence for pigs, possibly justified since his secret identities are Spider-Pig (Spider-Man) and Harry Plopper (Harry Potter).