Does Cognitive Performance Predict Contest Outcome in Pigs?

Losing aggressive contests may impact survival, reproductive success and animal welfare. Previous experience plays an important role in shaping contest behaviour, but less is known about how individual variation in learning abilities influences contest dynamics and resource-holding potential. Here, we investigated whether learning performance (acquisition learning and reversal learning) in domestic pigs, Sus scrofa, predicts the outcome of a contest against an unfamiliar opponent. While acquisition learning speed did not predict contest outcome, pigs that successfully learned the reversal were more likely to win the contest than pigs that failed to learn the reversal. As expected, weight difference between opponents was also an important factor in predicting contest outcome. Our results suggest that cognitive flexibility may confer an advantage in contests, unless pigs already have a substantial weight advantage over their opponent. These findings advance our understanding of the role of cognitive processes in animal contests and suggest that promoting cognitive flexibility may reduce the potential welfare impacts arising from stressful social defeat. Further research is required to determine whether cognitive flexibility influences assessment strategy and allows pigs to resolve contests with fewer costs.