Female mini-pig performance of temporal response differentiation, incremental repeated acquisition, and progressive ratio operant tasks

Increased knowledge of the cognitive abilities of mini-pigs is needed due to their increasing use in behavioral neuroscience research. Here, six female Yucatan mini-pigs performed tasks thought to measure timing behavior (temporal response differentiation, TRD), learning (incremental repeated acquisition, IRA), and motivation (progressive ratio, PR). Daily 30-min sessions for food reinforcers required a lever press be maintained for at least 10 but no longer than 14s (TRD), learning a new sequence of lever presses each test day (IRA) or an escalating number of presses for subsequent reinforcers (PR). All animals performed PR two days/week while three performed TRD five days/week and the other three performed IRA five days/week. Over the four test weeks, no animal completed TRD training and only one appeared to progress. For this task, lever press maintenance appeared difficult since by choice, the pigs used a front hoof, rather than the snout, to press the lever. IRA subjects showed gradually increasing performance with response rates comparable to those of rats but below those of children and monkeys and accuracy below that for rats. PR response rates were higher than those typically reported for rats, but lower than for adult rhesus monkeys or children. Physical differences in the way that each species responds likely account for these differences.