Category: Nature
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Announcing…
The Learned Pig is changing. Since launching in November 2013, The Learned Pig has taken an instinctive approach to editorial. We have published what feels right to us and we have published as often as we can. We are very proud of the work we have done so far and the brilliant people we have…
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Join The Learned Pig!
The Learned Pig is looking for two new section editors to take a lead as we expand and adapt our editorial offering over the course of 2019. Each new section editor will take charge of one editorial thread and help to shape its direction. Currently these are art, thinking, nature, writing, but we will be…
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Clouting
December It takes two years off their life, if they have lambs when they’re shearlings, if they’re going to live on the fells. Not much of the thin wintery daylight filters through the half-open door, and the straw on the floor lends a glow to the place. The barn is chilly and has…
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Gardening in the Tropics
Brief Lives Gardening in the Tropics, you never know what you’ll turn up. Quite often, bones. In some places they say when volcanoes erupt, they spew out dense and monumental as stones the skulls of desaparecidos – the disappeared ones. Mine is only a kitchen garden so I unearth just occasional skeletons. The…
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![The Book of Feral Flora [extract]](https://thelearnedpig.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/0033-1.jpg)
The Book of Feral Flora [extract]
I planted a garden and removed the weeds because they were getting too tall and too abundant. Some were choking my other plants and some smelled of decaying spinach or mint. Then when summer came I noticed lichens (plants that eat light and nothing more) growing on the trunks of my fruit trees like tiny…
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Nature Studies
Plants Plants are deceptive. You see them there looking as if once rooted they know their places; not like animals, like us always running around, leaving traces. Yet from the way they breed (excuse me!) and twine, from their exhibitionist and rather prolific nature, we must infer a sinister not to say imperialistic…
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What is it like to be a pig?
Most people know little about the characters and habits of the farm animals that live around us, often hidden away from view in large industrial sheds. What are they like, how do they live? Through careful observation we can learn more. Take, for example pigs. Pigs are quite like dogs – friendly, playful, tactile, really…
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VIDEO: Pigs at Play
This is part of CARNEVALE, a collaborative art-science project that explores animal welfare questions and the enthusiasm of pigs for investigative play. Click to see the rest.
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In pictures: Objects designed for pigs
Popcorn Piñata Pig Kerplunk Melon Mines House of Many Doors Fruit Machine Apple Barrel This is part of CARNEVALE, a collaborative art-science project that explores animal welfare questions and the enthusiasm of pigs for investigative play. Click to see…
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INN I DE DYPE SKOGERS FAVN
Epigenetic Memory in the Spruce Tree Foresti covers 37% of Norway’s combined area, almost half of which is made up by the tree species called Norway spruce. The rest consists of mostly pine and birch. It is therefore only natural that spruce forests should feature so heavily on black metal album covers and lyrics. The…
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Significant Others
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him. – Ludwig Wittgenstein I am animal and so are you, but where do we start and end, and could we, ever, converse as equals amongst other animals? It is as much a question about Us as about Them. As early as the…