The Gerasene Demoniac

out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains, a great herd of swine feeting, and all the devils besought him, saying, sitting us among the peaks, allow us to go into them, and forthwith Jesus gave them leave, and the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine, and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and were choked from the sea. Welcome Stuff to Blow your Mind. A production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff

to blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's still October, so of course we're letting out a great demonic oink today, Robert, I know. So, so you wanted to talk about a demoniac today. And this was a very exciting idea to me because this story in the Bible about the garrison or gathering demoniac has long been one of my favorites, but also because it's a story that concerns possessed swine. I think it gives us a great opportunity to talk about pig technology. Yeah,

this is this is a really fun one. I guess

you'd say. This is definitely a section of the New Testament that I remember turning to when I would if I was bored in church growing up, because it it is such a weird little scene, you know, Jesus meeting with um an individual that's possessed not by one demon, but by like thousands of demons, a legion of demons and uh, and then negotiating them out of the man, but not only that, sending them then into a whole bunch of pigs, which subsequently fall off the side of

a cliff into the ocean. Inge rown right. And there are plenty of other stories in the New Testament about Jesus doing various healings, doing exorcisms, so that that happens elsewhere. But it's like the setting and the weird conclusion of this story that make it so memorable going into the pigs.

So maybe we should look at the story in a little bit of context and then come back to talk about thoughts about it's you know, historical and theological role, and then thoughts about pigs as animals and uh and what a stampede of of devilish intelligence they might bring forth. So I guess let's start with the story in the

context of the Gospel of Mark. And I think that's a good place to start, because pretty much all scholars agree that Mark is the earliest of the four canonical gospels, since it's clear that the other gospels used Mark as a source and like they made variations on it according to their storytelling priorities, and probably also from the use of other sources. Uh. Now, this story does also appear

in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but with some changes. Uh. So. In the Gospel of Mark, the story happens in chapter five, and it's right after a chapter where Jesus is out preaching to a crowd. He tells the crowd a bunch of familiar parables, like the parable of the lamp under the bushel basket and the parable of the mustard seed. You know, if you have faith is only the size of a mustard seed, you can do great things, hits right. Uh. And in the chapters before this in Mark, he's done

some various preaching, some healing. I think he heals the paralytic, he heals a man with a withered hand. But so at the end of this UH, at the fourth chapter, after he's been doing this preaching, Jesus says, okay, let's go across the sea, which is taken to refer to the Sea of Galilee. It's a body of water UH in the area. So Jesus and the disciples leave behind the crowds. They get in the boat to cross the water, and on the way across, a big storm comes up,

and the disciples are all shaken in their boots. But then Jesus wakes up and he says, peace be still, and the storm is replaced with dead calm. And then Jesus goes on to immediately shame his disciples for being afraid, saying, have you still no faith? And they're all of course amazed by his powers, saying who is this then that

even the wind and the sea obey him. So I think, in the context of the Gospel story, UH, this preacher Jesus has been telling parables that shows great wisdom about the coming Kingdom of God, and he's showing more and more direct power himself all the time, not just as a teacher, but as possibly some kind of sorcerer or even divine being. And that's when we get to the

demoniac here. So they get to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and Mark says it's in the country of the Garacenes, but other gospels say it's in a different place, the country of the Maternes. And that's why they're different names for this story, the gathering Swine, the gathering demoniac, the Guarristine and swine the Garristine demoniac. But wherever it is, we immediately meet this man out of the tombs. Yeah. And it's it's worth noting that,

you know, the differences in the other two gospels. Um, in Matthew, for instance, it's not one man out of the tomb, but two men out of the tomb. Uh. And then also in Luke, it's one man again, but this time he's also naked, as if to you know,

really stress the feral nature of the individual. Well, yes, and then Luke's telling of the story, Uh, it's I think it's that's the one where it's stressed that he was naked before he got the demons cast out, and then he puts on clothes at once the demons are out of him, right, and then sometimes in like retellings I've noticed, especially in artistic depictions of this scene, sometimes the artists seemed to just pick and choose from all three, you know. So I saw one where it was two

naked individuals serving as the men of the tomb. Oh, this is a very common thing that happens. Because you've got, you know, different versions of the same story that appear across the four Gospels. Sometimes people will just, like as modern readers come, bind them all into one, so they'll put all the elements there next to each other in ways that don't always make sense, but it can be funny.

So what follows is, yeah, an exorcism scene, you know, one that's maybe not as as dramatic as modern horror viewers would would hope for. It's a little more more of a negotiation in some respects. Yeah, but yeah, on the face of it, we have a very disturbed individual who seems to live among the tombs and abuses himself

with rocks, like scratching himself up with rocks. Yeah, we're told he lives in the graveyard, but he spends day and night prowling the graveyard in the mountains, bruising himself with rocks and howling. Yeah, and then of course when Jesus shows up, right, we get the the unclean spirits. Immediately they start begging Jesus like they recognize his power, which I think is a thing that's supposed to be important in the story. Yeah, they realized they don't have

a lot of bargaining strength her into this. It's like when the bad Cops shows up in the interrogation room. They're like, oh no, yeah, now we're we've been getting away with this, but now we're in trouble. And so they immediately begged Jesus not to send them away. They reveal their name, which I think we can come back to that, but that might be a theologically significant thing. They revealed their name is Legion, as in a large Roman military unit consisting of more than a thousand soldiers.

It was different numbers at different times. Yeah. I was looking at at various modern translations, and there's at least one translation that just said our name is a lot because there are a lot of us. I mean, I do think that's sort of what it was supposed to mean, but but it lacks that right you know, like, what if it was the name is a whole message us, Like what if the film was The Exorcist three colon a lot instead of Legion, which which of course is

referring back to this very this very line. Uh. Though it might also be significant that Legion is like a Roman concept because of course at the time, like a huge theme of the Gospels is that the people, the Jewish people are being occupied by the Romans, and there are a lot of sort of rebellious sentiments and anti Roman ideas. Yeah, yeah, and when we'll definitely come back to some of the Roman elements here. Yeah. But to conclude the story, of course, this was in the opening

passage we read. But Jesus commands the demons out. They asked him to send them into a flock of pigs nearby, and Jesus is like, okay, take the pigs. So he sends them into the pigs, and then the pigs immediately go stampeding down into the water of the Sea of Galilee to their doom. So I see overall that I think this story in its place in the Gospel of

Mark is kind of an escalation moment. Like Jesus keeps showing greater and greater power, not just wisdom and teaching, not just power over the winds and the seas, but now even over a legion of demons. And so all the disciples are of course like, oh wow, how you know he's he's so powerful. They keep emphasizing that this is even more powerful than we thought he was before.

So I was looking around for a little more information on this than I read A Spirit Possession and the Garrison h Demoniac by J. Duncan M. Derrett from The journal Man in nine and he made the following points about it. The first of all, he points out there are no really important textual textual variance of the tale, you know, like one one man possessed by demons, too naked or not naked like still, that the story is

essentially the same. Now, I wonder if that also refers to the fact that there are not major like non canonical early older texts that have different versions of the story that change, because that is the case with some stories. He also points out that the man here is clearly shunned as unclean, and he's engaging and in kind of an out of control cleansing ritual, you know, the scraping of the body, um you know, the the abusing of himself with rocks, you know, really on those same lines

as like flagellation and so forth. Um Deret also draws comparisons to various rights of possession in other cultures where sensation to physical pain is dulled, which I think is an interesting point because there are various like especially religious trials and rituals, in which one will do something that is either you know, definitely painful or takes on the appearance of painful and just be via the like the frenzy of the of the ritual, one is able to

to experience less pain or to uh or at least it's you know, you get into that area where it's like there's the experience of the of the right, and then there is the the story of the right you know. Well yeah. This also makes me think, of course, about the nature of what was going on when people believe they encounter demon possession in the ancient world. I mean, so, of course, there are multiple theories about this, and it

would probably vary from case to case. Of course, one major and pretty obvious thing is the idea that people in the ancient world often didn't understand that they were looking at the symptoms of various mental illnesses, and you know, would characterize that as a person being possessed by an

unclean spirit. But you could also imagine a person who might not necessarily have a particular mental illness, but would be prompted in some various way by the religious context to believe that they were possessed in some way and act out the role. Yeah. I think of some of the medieval rights of penance that would come much later, in which one would say, for instance, flatulate yourself with with sticks or whips, uh you know where, ragged clothing

and crawl through the streets. Uh, you know that sort of thing. Uh. So in in in all of this, Dred is saying that this is you know, potentially essentially at the theater of protests that's taking place. You know that there is a you know, there's a performance quality to it, um of course. And then he points out that, you know, Jesus acquires the demon's name, which is often an important aspect of some sort of an exorcism ritual. And I think that even shows up in like the

the Conjuring movies, right. Really, Yeah, I didn't know if there was a like an actual ancient exorcism precedent for that, but it's in the second Conjuring movie. There's this whole thing where it's like I figured out the demon's name, now I can defeat it. Oh yeah, it's definitely definitely part of Dungeons and Dragons, you know, really the demon's name, you have some power over it. Usually from the Gospel of Guy GaX. Yeah. Um. And then he also points

out what we just discussed already. Legion is, of course a military term. The man is possessed by a host of demons, and Jesus is he's either speaking to all of them or perhaps to the leader commanding them. And Jesus has presented as being, you know, much more than a match for an entire legion of demons. Like you said, this is a lot of this is about presenting just how how powerful Jesus is. Yes, And I think that's

an important point of comparison. When even you look at something like in The Exorcist, you know, the priests show up and the demon taunts them and stuff. It's like, okay, I'm ready to do bad attle. When Jesus shows up, the demon is immediately crying uncle. He's like Oh no, don't send me out too far. Maybe just let me

go to the pigs, like he immediately knows he's beaten now. Pigs, Derek reminds us, were slaughtered in offering to the underworld at Roman burials, thus their connection to the tombs and to this particular individual's fascination with morbidity and with death. Pigs are associated with sacrifices to demons as well as with beast reality, and Derett stresses that there is a

sexual connotation to spirit possession. Uh, you know, this idea of of entering into the pigs, or also just the idea of a spirit having entered into you and taken hold of your senses. Well, that also makes me think about another possible explanation for a belief in spirit possession in the ancient world, which is just maybe a person wasn't even necessarily experiencing symptoms of mental illness or even

acting out a possession. Maybe they were just behaving in an unconventional way and people around them said, well, you know, nobody in the right mind would act like that. So if they violated sexual taboos or something like that, you could say they must have had a demon in order to do that. Now, one thing that he does point out is that pigs are actually great swimmers, really yeah,

and also that they don't stampede. So there's a big problem with this idea of potentially it defends how I guess you read into the demon possession of the pigs. But pigs on their own are not going to stampede. They're probably not going to drown in the river. Now, I guess you could say that, well, they're not. They're no longer pig brains controlling those pigs. Those are scared demon brains, and maybe they don't know how to swim. Well, this is funny. I was also looking up examples. I

was trying to find things about pigs stampeding. I didn't really find anything like good documented like zoological literature about pig stampeding, though I did find a news story about supposedly somewhere in Syria stampede of pigs killing some IIS fighters and in recent years. But I think that's probably just like a news like a journalist appellation. It might have not have been a stampede, but just like a

herd of pigs. Wasn't there a scene in a cornte McCarthy novel where I heard of pigs trample off into the river, though probably a reference to this very tale. I feel like it was. It was one of the Appalachian books, like maybe Child of God or Outer Dark. I don't know. I've I've read some of those books, but I don't remember that scene. But I could be wrong. Yeah, it might not have been picked, been something else. But there are a lot of drowned animals at one point,

certainly now on the uncleanliness of pigs. Obviously, much has been written about this because there you know, there there are uh supposed practical reasons that pork is prohibited in Judaism and Islam. One is that pigs are not very sustainable and drier environments. That's the argument. Another is that pork, of course can contain trickin nosis, but of course that's

taken care of if it's cooked properly. Um so, so it's often in it out that like that, even when Judaism and Islam, even when these religions travel out of areas where you could make the argument that a pig is not suitable for this environment, like, the restriction still remains. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm convinced by any of the alleged practical reasons behind the prohibition on pork and other foods in Judaism and Islam, because I mean, I haven't seen

any really convincing evidence there. It seems to be more likely. This is another one of the many unique practices and characteristics you'd find in any religion or culture that don't necessarily result from some kind of clear material environmental mandate.

I mean, there are some like we were just recently talking about, you know, sky burial practices in Tibet being a religious cultural practice, but perhaps resulting from the fact that also within that landscape, it's hard to find places to dig graves, it's hard to find wood to burn bodies with, so it just sort of makes sense from a material environmental standpoint. I think sometimes explanations like that makes sense. But I'm I'm not convinced by any of

the pork ones, right. Another one that sometimes brought up well there in the texts themselves. Sometimes a point is made about the cloven hoof, which seems kind of nonsensical. Why, yeah, what's the problem. Yeah, there's also the idea that, well, pigs are omnivores and they may consume scavenged flesh, and that could be seen as unclean. But yes, we've discussed in the show before even strict herbivores will eat meat

on occasion. Um. I Unfortunately, like I did some searching on this, uh and and saw some videos of like like how many ducklings can can a particular cow eat that? You know? I mean, it just it happens, it's it's it's so it's never considered cows before. We've thought about like deer eating meat. Of course, squirrels and meat, we think, yeah, wilder creatures, right, But this now is just haunting my brain. Why is it so much scarier to be eaten by a cow than any other animal? I can think because

you trusted it so much. I thought that you had it, had invested through a domestication. Seems so docile, and then it jumps seven feet straight in the air and eats you. Have you ever seen how high cows can jump? It looks wrong. I don't know that I have. Certainly I'm always impressed by how fast a horse can move, and how fast it can like PLoP unto the ground and

pop back up again. So let's get back though to the religious reasons that ultimately the social reasons to prohibit something like a pork is explained by a Nigel Barber, PhD. In psychology today. The signaling theory of religion puts forth that abstaining from something like pork is a way of signaling your devotion and provides something that a social group can bond over, and there's a you're all going to

be paying a ritual cost for this. Basically, food taboos keep co religionists together and and it's something where like everyone has to give up something, you have to pay a fee to to join this club. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Again, I don't know that that's the primary real reason, but that certainly seems very plausible. I mean, I think they are all kinds of things that religions do where the main goal of doing them is showing that you are a devoted member

of the religion and good standing. Right. Yeah, I mean, like for a modern example, one turns to like the straight edge movement. Right, We're on one hand, you can say, okay, there is a sort of signaling going on here. People who are abstaining from these various substances are doing so and by doing so they can they can claim to

be a part of a particular group. However, it's not the only thing, like they're also you know, any individual that's that's following that lifestyle will also point to other reasons why they are abstaining, not merely to be a part of a group, but for you know, various other lifestyle purposes. Oh sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, but whether or not those other reasons are also truly motivating them,

I think it's hard to deny that shared abstinence creates solidarity. Right, But to come back to the Romans, the Romans definitely a pork. And so when the Omens roll in and began, you know, controlling your territory, derating the pork, you are not. There's a firm line to be drawn in the sand there between us and them, right right, So there could be like people all around with flocks of pigs that they're preparing to eat, and you can look at those

things and be like, well, that's no part of my life. Yeah. And of course, ultimately, you know, rules against eating certain animals are going to be kind of an arbitrary agreement. And I think a huge example of this, as well discussed is the predominant American notion that it's well and good to eat a pig, that eating a pig is something that should be celebrated, we should have parades about it. But eating a dog, well, that's just that's just not

acceptable now. And then nature of exercismicism itself, Well, we've covered exorcism on the show before, and I think it's always important to to think about rights of exorcism across various cultures. Is is being rights potentially too, of expulsion of negative feelings, uh, negative attributes, and in some cases an attempt crude attempt in some cases to treat mental illness,

you know. But I think think we have to think about, you know, a tendency to think about the exorcisms as a pure, superstitious right, and you know, not to think about its connotations to more secular rights, such as expelling negative thoughts via breath in various meditation and yoga practices, you know. I mean, we don't think of that as exorcism, We don't think of that as magic, but it is an exercise that can allow us to well to to to quote, doone to you know, to allow your your

fear to pass over and through you Oh yeah. I mean I've see no problem at all from a secular standpoint, excepting that exorcism could sometimes be a successful psychological intervention, not because there are actually like like spirit demons, but because like going like you're saying, like going through a

cathartic event where you go through some kind of ritual purging. Uh. I'm not saying that it's necessarily a reliable practice, but it's not surprising that it might work sometimes in some cases. And certainly not to say that it is a better method for like, for actual mental illness. But but at any rate, I just want to like frame, you know, provide a frame of reference for it. Um. Also, I want to come back to the idea of pig based

u beings, pig based monsters, and pig based creatures. Um. You do see these should pop up in a lot of different mythologies around the world wherever they are pigs. I mean, it's just given right, wherever there are pigs, there is going to be some idea of the pig half man, half pig being man. Pig monsters are are underrated for horror value, yeah, absolutely, I feel like sometimes

they're rolled out as more comedic relief uh. And in those cases, I don't I don't think enough you know, enough emphasis is placed on just how how horrifying, how scary like a wild boar can be. I have no respect to whatsoever for the solo movies. That's just not my kind of horror film. But the one thing I remember thinking was actually successful about them is just the fact that, like the creep in them, Where's sometimes wears a pig mask. Oh yeah, that was one of his

many disguises, and one of a very dramatic individual. He had a mask, yet a puppet. He had a whole production truck. The puppets just kind of goofy. The pig mask is where it's at. Uh. Now, I want to make a quick side note about Chinese tradition, you know, and all this talk of demons and pigs, I can't help but think of Pigsy. Are you familiar with Pigsy? I don't think I know Pigsy, Pigsy or what is it?

A zoo um bagier from Journey into the West. So if you just if you look up Journey into the West and Pigsy, uh, for instance, on YouTube, you'll find numerous clips I'm sure from the various film and TV adaptations of Journey into the West. I mean, they've also been video game adaptations of Journey into the West, but

the accounts vary. But basically, he was punished by the Jade Emperor for lusting after chang Uh, the Goddess of the Moon, and his punishment, he's cast down to Earth and winds up in the form of a half pig, half human monster. But just his faults, he becomes a great adventure and is a key character and Journey into the West and ultimately slays many demons. Oh, a pig slayer. Did we talk about him in our in our monster

Slayer episode last year? I don't think we did. Um. Yeah, I don't think Journey into the West has has actually come up on the show before. But there's you know, there's a there's a lot of wonderful material there if we ever choose to come back to it. Oh, I guess I gotta read it now. Yeah, we're watching. Like I said, there's some fabulous film adaptations of this. You got the Monkey King, you got Pigsy or the whole group.

All right, I think we have to take a break, but we will be right back with more about about the garristine demoniac, the gathering swine, pig science, and and much more than Alright, we're back. So I've I've already mentioned how this is. This is one of those little Bible stories that if you're if you're bored in a

Christian church, you sometimes turned to. Also, it has had a big influence on on horror and sort of demonic and occults themed material, most notably The Exorcist three Legion, a surprisingly good movie, given that The Exorcist one, of course horror classic Exorcist to one of the most hilarious bad horror movies of all time. I remember it's got a line in it it's something like your machine has scientifically proven there's an ancient demon locked inside her. Yeah.

I think if I had to rewatch an Exorcist film this year, it would be three, Like like one is a classic. But also I've always been one that is believed that the best parts of the Exorcist are not the you know, the screaming crazy uh you know Reagan, the you know, raging out with demonic possession. It's smaller moments. It's like the little what Pozoozu, the creature that's been made by the child or or drawn on a sheet in the background. That sure, yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

I actually think some of the best stuff in The Exorcist is the parts where it's kind of like a seventies character study movie. I mean, there are parts that almost feel kind of like a Scorsese movie or something, with like father Cares visiting his mother and that kind of stuff, and his horrible nightmares. And I think it's a very effective horror film. But Exorcist three is also

really really good. It's been years since I've seen it, but uh, at least I won't say it's as good as the first one, but it's surprisingly good for being a third film. I can't think of a third film that competes apart from Halloween three. Oh um, Underworld three is the best of the Underworld. So there's that. But the the ie An Legion things shows up in all kinds of just like you know, demon horror, right, it's how can you resist? It seems like such an easy

thing to pick up and run with. I remember it also shows up in something that I inexplicably read when I was a kid. I remember buying a used copy of the screenplay or the teleplay to Stephen King's Storm of the Century, which is I think not ever a piece of fiction. I think he wrote it directly for

like made for TV. So I was just reading the original work, which is his teleplay, not kings best work, but basically, uh, the demon Legion shows up in a small island town in New England, of course, and he demands to steal the town's children. And he he's originally disguised as a man named Lenoge and of course it's an anagram for my name is for Legion for but also he's played by the demon is played by Comb Fiori, a prolific character actor and the bad guy from one

of your favorites, Robert Chronicles of Rittick. Oh yeah, he's what the Lord Marshall right right, yeah? Is he like he's like the main big bad in it and yeah, yeah, he's the head necromonger. Yeah yeah, and he's he is a wonderful character Actor's been in tons of things, so

great comedic actor as well. Now, in any given like piece of a religious text, there, you know, there's always various things going on with it, right, there's a question of what does it say, what is the story, What did the the people who wrote it or told it or transcribed it mean for it to say? And then what is the tradition of using it? How has it been used and even misused over the years to drive

home particular points? Right? Often, what did the author intend for it to mean versus how has it been interpreted by the faithful over the years is a very different thing. Yeah, And one one interpretation of this text I was surprised by was the fact that it's been uh is, there's been used to drive home this idea that humans have no responsibility towards animals, particularly uh suggested by St. Augustine

of Hippo. Augustine wrote, quote, Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition. For judging that there are no common rights between us and the beasts and trees, he sent the devils into a herd of swine, and with a curse, withered the tree on which he found no fruit. Oh yeah, that's the withering of the fig tree, right, which is a different story In the Bible, Jesus comes

across a fig tree. It says there were no figs on the tree, for figs were not in season, and Jesus becomes angry with the tree and he withers it. Yeah, I mean he was having a bad day in that day. Well, I think that story it to go back to what authors actually intended versus how they're interpreted. I think a lot of scholars think that that story was originally meant to be like a metaphor for people who did not bear good fruits. Right, so it's not literally about trees

or are showing off his abilities to wither fruit? Right? At least yeah, at least under this interpretation, it seems very a very plausible interpretation to me. But here Augustine's running with it is like now it's literally about trees. It's about how trees not worth nothing. You can do whatever you want to them, it doesn't matter. Jesus showed it in this parable. Yeah, seen, you can well imagine that.

Like Augustine like was kicking a pig or something or a dog and someone say, hey, don't don't kick that dog, and he's like, well, Jesus put a whole bunch of demons in pigs and drove him off a cliff, So I have free reign to kick as many dogs and pigs as I see fit. Somebody like somebody shamed him for letting his orchard with her, and then he's like, I'll show you. When he goes and looks up the Bible,

He's like, look right here. So various authors have have have taken issue with Augustine's interpretation here uh, Christian vegetarian uh and Anglican priest Andrew Lindsay, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals. He counter argues and says, you know, this is ridiculous. It's just propping up Augustine's prior opinion that animals have no rights. And he contends that the demons ultimately that they're selecting their own vessel here and

uh and did so because they were weaker creatures. Uh and uh, you know, and obviously the demons themselves don't care for animal rights. Meanwhile, he argues that there are plenty of other passages where it's far easier to read pro animal ideas in the words of Christ than it is to uh, you know, to to to shoehorn in an anti animal rights agenda. Well, there is one thing that I actually do wonder about the story that's very interesting.

Is there supposed to be some kind of metaphorical or theological meaning to the fact that the pigs, So that Jesus sends the demons into the pigs where they asked to go, He's like, okay, you can go into the pigs, and then they go into the pigs, and then the pigs immediately stampede and die. Why did they stampede and die? Is there is that just like? Was that just added to the story because like, okay, you know, that'd be an interesting way to conclude it. And now the demons

are dealt with? Or was there some like meaning They're like, does does this have something to do with the Romans or with you know, yeah, because we already touched on the connection between the Romans and pigs. We touched on the connection between pigs and the location with the you know,

the the tombs. So and then also you always have to wonder too with stories like this, like what what other you know, pre existing narratives where they're out there that have potentially been otherwise lost, that are reflected in this story. Now, Thomas Aquinas, apparently I read thought that this passage showed that Christ was primarily concerned with men rather than pigs. But and and I've seen that pointed

out a few different places. But I was looking for like a direct quote on this, and I was looking at acquaintas his thoughts on the passage, and most of it seemed to come down to him stressing the fact that the pigs were unclean. So of course that's the best place to send a bunch of demons. They love unclean things. And it also shows shows he would he argued that the devil can't kill you unless you present yourself as an unclean animal. But I don't know that.

There's a lot of riffing on the scripture that I ran across, but I'm not sure animal rights are the lack thereof was the primary concern. Well, while we're on the subject of the demonic oink, I think, uh, this is a great opportunity to jump over to talking a little bit about pig intelligence, pig behavior, and even a very recent discovery about possible pig tool use. Yeah, yeah, that that was. That was I think ultimately the the bit of news that that made up my mind on

pursuing this as a topic. Yeah, so we've touched on animal rights, we've touched on the notion of higher intelligence in the form of demons being dropped into the bodies of pigs. H Plus the notion that in some traditions pigsy from journeying into the West is a product of reincarnation. Uh So, having touched on these notions, you know, we come back around to the question, well, how smart is just a normal pig? You know, certainly I think we can assume its brain is not on part of the humans.

We can more than assume that. We can state that. But they're not the dumb animals we all we sometimes take them for, uh the sort of comic relief. Look, how dumb the pig is. It's covered in mud, it lives in a pig pin. Well, I don't know if this is actually a good explanation, but at least something I've heard postulated in the past is what if the common prohibitions on eating pigs in some religions stem from not the uncleanness of pigs, but the similarity between pigs

and humans. I mean, there are a lot of sort of biological and morphological similarities. For example, some pigs having like fairly bare skin kind of like a less hair than most mammals have unlike kind of like they're human cousins, uh, just things. Oh apparently human meat tasting kind of like pork. Apparently. I've also noticed that when a pig is butchered, uh, sometimes its body looks like that of a of a

human um. Particularly ever, if you watch a lot of like cooking shows on you know, very streaming channels, and the inevitably there'll be a scene where someone has uh you know, they're they're rolling out the slaughtered pig, or then it's been prepared for the barbecue grill and it

looks alarmingly like a small person. Yeah, and so again, I don't know if that really has all that much explanatory power, but I can see that a little bit like maybe we anthropomorphize pigs because it's just already pretty close.

There's a natural leap from humans to pigs, and boy do we I mean, this has always disturbed me, the level to which a barbecue restaurant will anthropomorphize a pig, usually on the logo, where it'll be you know, it'll be like smiling, happy humanoid pigs roaming around or even doing grizzly things like cooking themselves or climbing into grills, Like, what are you doing? Uh, you know you shouldn't you be like distancing yourself from this notion that the pigs

are rational beings and you're eating them. Well, it makes me think of the Chick fil A marketing strategy where they would have the cows painting the signs. It's brilliant, really anthropomorphized the other animal. That's that. That was I think the wise choice. So also looking around a little bit just on sort of pre existing um knowledge about the intelligence of pigs, because there's there's been a lot of data on this. So Barry Esterbrook wrote a book

called Pigtails which gets into all of this. Uh. He's a science writer, and he points out some of the big key points about peg behavior. First of all, pigs have been taught to play computer games, and this gets to to basically do it to the fact that pigs have proven themselves to be very good at learning new task, learning new tricks um, which is essentially what's going on when they're playing a computer game and some of these experiments they're trainable. Yeah, pigs have a sense of self

and they can recognize themselves in mirrors. They can also figure out how a mirror works. I mean not in terms of like how it's made and how it's like the optics of it, but you know, they can they can figure out what they're seeing through it and use it to identify food. Oh really, so they can recognize that the mirror is a reflection of what's you know, behind them and stuff. Yeah, and also pigs can look at another pig and calculate what that pig might do

or how it might act. A two thousand sixteen University of Lincoln study found that, as with humans, the pig's judgment and decisions are governed by mood and personality type. Uh. They're also proven to be really good remembering where food stores are, and not only that, how they rate in size to each other. So it's not just a matter of like, oh, there's some the researchers put so much food,

you know, put put food here and here and here. No, they can remember the proportions as well, you can rank them in their their heads um. And they're also really good at deceiving each other when it comes to food. Oh, how does that work? Basically comes down to the fact that they're they're intelligent animals, but they're also highly social animals. So you know they in the wild, wild hogs are not living in seclusion. They're living in contact with one another. Uh,

so they are social creatures. And on the subject of domestication, Uh, the domesticated pig diverge from wild hogs somewhere like eight thousand years ago. That's that's when we began domesticating pigs and uh, and it's it is kind of impressive that we haven't managed to domesticate the smarts out of them, like they're like, even the domesticated pig is an intelligent creature. Well, maybe we should explore more of that intelligence after we come back from a break and we can talk about

pigs and tool use. Than all right, we're back. So tool use this is uh, this is really fascinating because of course tool use is our thing the humans. Tools are the things we use to build our barbecue restaurants and to slaughter pigs and then to cook pigs and serve pigs and then to eat pigs. But apparently it takes no tools to cast demons from a human into pigs. We're not told there's a wand involved or anything. So yeah, Robert, I I found out about this interesting report on pig

intelligence recently, I think because you shared it with me. Yeah, the day it came out, I I shared it with our our Facebook group. Stuff to Blow your mind a discussion module, which is a place you can go if you want to discuss episodes of the show and uh, you know, sort of related studies with other listeners. Uh So, for some background talking about tool use. Tool use is often taken, of course, is one of the most interesting

and most important signs of higher intelligence and animals. It's you know, it's I think fairly plausibly argued to be one of the main things that makes humans very special. Right. We've got language, we've got tool use, right, But we're not the only animals that use tools. A few non human animals show pretty clear or undisputed use of tools. Of course. One great example is other primates, right, like chimpanzees, binobo's, orangutans, and even I think you know, guerrillas, and some monkeys

and stuff. Chimpanzees will sometimes like use large rocks to crush nutshells, use sticks for hunting or for fishing insects or other prey out of crevices and enclosures. We've also extensively covered tool use in some bird species in the past. If you want to learn more, you can check out our older episodes on the Unsettling depths of bird intelligence. I think it was called Yes. The primary examples here

are birds like Corvid's and parrots. Great example is the new Caledonian crow, which has been involved in a lot of research. They can use sticks or bark for rooting around inside crevices, fishing for insects and larvae. Uh, sometimes even displaying really startling levels of abstraction. I believe there are examples of them constructing tools, like putting things together to make tools, or using one tool not to get food, but to access a second, better tool which can be

used to get food. I mean that's interesting. Yeah, And of course there are other mammals. Marine mammals like cetaceans also sometimes display behaviors that might count as tool use. I think you've mentioned before dolphins, like using sponges as tools. Yeah, that definitely comes up. What was the it's basically like

for sea floor foraging. I believe so. Yeah, I'm I'm a little foggy on the details of that one, but but there is a there's definitely a case that has been made for tool use by dolphins, even the octopus. Actually it's invertebrate tool use. Uh. The octopus for example, well sometimes carry shells or like coconut shells with them to fold over their bodies to use as shelter, armor, hunting blind uh. And then there are more arguable examples of things that might or might not be tool used,

depending on your criteria. I mean, if you really stretch it, like sometimes even reptiles like croc crocodilians are alleged to use tools. But I think not everyone would agree on whether these behaviors count. But maybe the newest, most surprising discovery of animal tool use as of the day we're recording this is this very recent documentation of tool use by pigs. So what would count as tool use? Well, I was reading a great article about this new discovery

and nat GEO by Christine Delamore. I think this is the best article I've found about the this new research, and she cites a definition here which seems very reasonable

to me. So the definition of tool use here is quote the exertion of control over a freely manipulable external object, which is the tool, with the goal of altering the physical properties of another object, substance, surface, or medium via a dynamic mechanical interaction, or to mediating the flow of information, which sounds a little complicated, but basically means you've got to use an object that's not part of your body, an object from the outside, to make changes to your

environment or objects in your environment, or to control information somehow. Now, if you're wondering, like, how can information work, I believe that would mean, for example, by changing what can be seen and by whom. So if you use an object to help you see something you couldn't otherwise see, or to keep somebody else from seeing something, like you put up something to hide yourself, that could be considered tool use. Right.

So yeah, Like so the idea of say the octopus climbing inside of a coconut is arguably an example of this, right, And I think though there would be differences between, Like going into a hole is not tool used, so you could be hiding there. I think it would be like if you carry along a thing with you that you can hide inside. But then even then you run into some difficulties. I mean, when you see an octopus doing that,

that seems like tool use. But when a hermit crab doesn't that that doesn't seem like tool use, right, So they're they're like, uh, They're always going to be these difficulties with these edge cases about what counts and what doesn't. So there's a lot of arguing, I think in the scientific literature about does this case count or does it

not count and why? But anyway, this new research about pig tool use originates with a conservation ecologist named Meredith root Bernstein who in October of was at a zoo in Paris. She was observing a group of vision wardy pigs at this Parisian zoo and Visayan warty pigs are a critically endangered species of wild pig native to the Philippines. They're critically endangered, like so many other creatures, because of habitat destruction. It's the ruin of their natural rainforest homeland

that has driven them to this point. You may have actually seen images of them. The males of the species often have a natural mohawk hairdo running down the length of their bodies, so they look pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, they look pretty rough and tumble. But this group observed by root Bernstein, they were in captivity and that's important to remember because that can sometimes change animal behavior. I've got an image, by the way for you to look

at here, Robert. The hair is mighty. Absolutely, I would go as far as to say that this particular hog looks rad This hog could play with some kind of like, uh, some kind of minor tough and a Russell Mulkahi movie. So in October fifteen, root Burnstein she was at this zooe and she noticed one of the pigs in this enclosure picking up a piece of tree bark with its mouth and then using the bark as a spade to

dig around in the soil within its enclosure. Uh. The pig was named Priscilla, by the way, and Priscilla's mate was named Billy. So the French are good at naming pigs. Actually, I don't know if the French name them, but Priscilla and Billy, and then of course there were there were younger pigs and the enclosure too. But root Burnstein, so she saw this happening, the pig picking up the bark with its mouth and digging with it, and she never heard of documented tool use in any species of pigs.

So she went home to look it up, and she couldn't find anything in the animal behavior literature, so she kept returning to the zoo and documenting the pig's behavior with the help of colleagues. But for several months she never saw it happen again. So what was going on here? Well? Delamore writes that Rude Bernstein suspected that the digging behavior was part of the pigs nest building process. And of

course nest building doesn't happen year round. It's not all the time, it's whenever there is a new litter of piglets coming, and this happens about twice a year. So root Bernstein and her colleagues waited, and in the following spring they did, in fact observe tool use. Yet again, three of the four pigs in the enclosure we're using bark to help dig out their nests bark or sticks. So does digging with bark count as tool use? We can look in more detail in a minute, but yes,

I think it meets the regular criteria right. It's using an object outside the body, a freely manipulable object to change the environment, and there's no doubt that they're doing it. There's video you can watch online. Though they do seem a little clumsy at it. They don't look like hyper

like dexterrous tool users. It's more kind of like they're flipping the stick all over the place and it kind of moves the dirt around, which does make me wonder what did tool use look like when like our ancestors first started doing it, just like, you know, wildly swinging things around and occasionally getting some benefit out of it. Well, I mean, I think a lot of us probably fit that description when we use, you know, a particular utensil or go after a particular task in the kitchen that

we don't normally do. Like I was grading a sweet potato last night, and I feel like that was basically what was happening. People who were observing it might think, wow, this this uh, this ape can barely manipulate this tool. Uh. I don't know if this counts. Is too using intelligence? Yes? Is it tool using intelligence? Or is it just occasionally rubbing and fumbling this piece of the metal against the this tuber. We're not sure, Robert, or your knuckles, Okay,

did you lose an they knuckles? Lucky, my my knuckles, my skin, that's all fine, But that potato did suffer I have lost a knuckler two to the greater before. But my my point being, uh, you don't have to be, uh, you know, an artful user of a tool to be a tool user, right, Uh, you know, that's exactly right.

So rut Bernstein and her co authors published their research in the journal Mammalian Biology in September twenty nineteen, and so all the authors were Meredith Root Bernstein, A Trumpteen, Narayan, Lucille Cornier, and Audi Bourgeois. The article is called context specific tool use in sus Sebifrons in Mammalian Biology and that this was published just in September in twenty nineteen, so specifically, what's going on with the digging process here? Well,

the things become kind of interesting. So the authors documented pigs using tools to dig four times in twenty sixteen and seven times in twenty seventeen, and it seems that the tool use always came in the middle of the nest to digging process. Ultimately, of course, the nest they're producing is going to be like a little dugout pit and that's gonna be lined with leaves and that's where the pig let's go. Uh. They also observed that the male pigs digging was clumsier and less productive than the

digging by the females. Uh. It also seemed that the knowledge about how to use the digging implements was being passed on both vertically from mother to offspring and horizontally by being taught to the males by the females. Interesting. They also introduced foreign objects into the enclosure, like they put spatulas in there to see if the pigs would try to use them. Apparently they did sort of a couple of times, but they seemed to prefer the sticks

in the bark. Yeah, I mean a spatulist seems like it would It would not be the best tool anyway for that task. Oh, I don't know. You could dig in loose soil okay with a spatula okay, but like a metal spoon would be better. Yeah, but biting on a metal spoon might hurt us in their mouth. Yeah, we're still giving them a human tool of and and this this is a creature that that is using a tool in a in a different manner. We need to make special pig digging mecca suits. Then we'll really see

how far their tool using intelligence goes. But The authors argued that the observed behaviors do meet the best definition of tool use. And I want to read a quote about how they explain this. They say, Uh, it is tool use quote, because it involved the manipulation of an external object, the bark, the stick, or the spatula. It

occurred exclusively and regularly within a goal oriented, repeated action pattern. Okay, so it's not just like they're running around with sticks in their mouths all the time and occasionally it moves some soil. It only happens sometimes and only when they're

digging nests. And to continue with their quote, they say, and as its end result, it altered both the distribution of the soil to make a pit and the physical properties of the tool user a physical disposition digging action, and thus it likely also included information transfer to the tool user in the form of appropriate receptive feedback different to that without tool use. So there's an information thing again, like using the stick to have a different method of

like feeling how deep the hole is and stuff. So one question is how has this behavior escaped attention so long? Uh? In Delamore's article, she mentions that well, wild pigs are sometimes understudied so maybe that's the case. But also, you know, one thing to think about is these pigs are in captivity. Animals in captivity also sometimes show behaviors that the same

animals do not exhibit in the wild. But then again, it seemed like the bark was only used for digging nests and only at a specific stage in the nest building process, which makes it pretty different from most of the repetitive, compulsive types of behaviors that you would see induced by captivity. Right. Yeah, it's not not a situation where these pigs were doing this all the time. They were only doing it like every six months during their

their nest building activities. Right. It's not the panther pacing in its cage in the way that it would not pace in the wild. So the question is do we find examples of these endangered pigs or other related pigs using tools in the wild. I think this is the first really documented case that's clear. But in her article, Delamore notes an interesting anecdote from somebody. She talks to, somebody named Fernando Dino Gutierrez who's president of the Philippine

conservation group known as the Tallara Foundation. And so here's this story. Quoting from Delmore's article uh quote. A few years ago, Gautierra has witnessed a group of wild pigs pushing rocks toward an electric fence to test it. And Gautierra says, as soon as they push and the rocks make contact, they would wait for the clicking sound or absence thereof clicking means the wires are hot and they will back off and not cross. No sounds mean it

is safe to investigate what's beyond the wire. So that seems like pigs using like possible edge case there of pigs using tools to mediate the flow of information. They were testing the fences systematically for weaknesses they remember. But as for whether these specific pigs, the vision warty pigs do this kind of thing in the wild, I think we don't really know that. Of course, there aren't many

of them in the wild. I think there might just be a few hundred that their numbers are not really known. But wild pig scientists of the world, combine your powers, figure this out, plunge the depths of pig technology. Yeah, it would be would be wonderful to hear more about this, and certainly to hear about how it's occurring in the wild. Now there's one last thing though, that makes this even

more interesting. It's not clear to root Bernstein and her co authors that the bark or the stick provides much of a utilitarian advantage, if any. According to the study, it seemed digging with the stick was sometimes less efficient than digging with the hoofs or with the snout, which is of course what they would normally use. I think so if and again you can see this if you

watch the video. The digging does sort of work, but it also it looks kind of bumbling and funny, and you can imagine that digging with the snout or the hoofs would actually be pretty quick. So if the bark isn't necessarily speeding up the digging process even though it is working, it's if it's not making the process faster or more efficient, why do it at all. One thing that occurred to me is why, well, maybe the snout gets sore. I mean, that could be a thing. Yeah, yeah,

that's that's one possibility. M One also wonders, of course, if if there is something communicated through the act of using the tool, and it's some sort of like a physical mental fitness communication. Yeah, that's a that's an interesting thing. So this could be tool use that actually, even though it's tool use, doesn't exist primarily for utilitarian advantage. What if this is just a learned animal cultural behavior. Sometimes animals do just pick up and repeat behaviors from one

another even though they don't provide an obvious continuing material benefit. Uh. Of course we can imagine that the brain must be supplying some kind of internal reward that motivates the pig's behavior. But of course, you know, we know from our own experience that we do behaviors all the time that don't provide a clear evolutionary utilitarian benefit. They're just sort of

like a cultural artifact. There's something a behavior popped up, it gets rewarded for some reason in our brains, even though it's not helping us like live longer, be stronger, or reproduce more well. And then via culture, there there are various specific tools that we continue to use despite the fact that there are much better ways to go about a particular task. The main idea that the main example comes to my mind is the wooden honey ladle

uh implement Um. We've talked about this on the show, but about how it's just it's a messy, unnecessary thing that looks cool. People like the way it looks. People like the way it looks. But the honey bear, the squeezable honey bear, is by far the superior means of putting honey on anything or in anything. But what if these pigs are using the sticks to dig for the same reason that you might use the might use the wooden honey spoon thing. I don't even know what you

call it. I think it has a name, and we're forgetting it once more, the honey knob, honey, the ridged honey knob, even though yeah, the squeeze bear that you just squeeze with your own hands is more efficient. But yeah, Now, another possibility that comes to mind here too is so so we're looking to learn more about the wild implement implementation of this tool use. So one question I would have is, Okay, in the wild, are they using the same pieces of wood, the same pieces of bark? Are

they comparable? Uh? And if they're not, that could be

an issue. Right, maybe they're using a different type of wood in the wild the other that's true, Yeah, maybe this is a behavior that they're trying to use tools that are the inferior versions of the tool that would be in their native range right or then also they're threatened by habitat loss, so maybe they'd only even in the wild, have the same access anymore, and they're making do with inferior tools to carry out this, uh, this practice that they've been doing for you know, for for

for so long. It's like after a nuclear apocalypse finding humans making phone calls with tin cans and string. You know, it's like, uh, why are they doing that? The tin the tin cans and string don't work all that well. But it's because they they're so used to doing the regular phone calls and they don't have the right tools anymore.

Oh man, can you imagine a post apocalyptic world in which there are no more smartphones, but but the people still use like little chunks of stone or wood as if they were smartphones that essentially like little idols, little wooden gods that they speak to and listen to. Yes, they carry around little rectangular flints that they stare at while they're out in public, and then if they see somebody they don't want to talk to, they can pretend to be doing something on their flint and then so

they don't have to look up and make eye contact. Yeah, well to bring it back to the gathering swine. I mean it makes me think about how, in a way, a lot of our our culturally learned behaviors are kind of like a weird little demon possession, right there, a thing that gets in our brain and exists for its own sake, even though it doesn't necessarily help us in any way, we just keep doing it. You know. It's

like it's the it's the self rewarding subroutine. Yeah, absolutely, all right, So that you have it, I feel like we covered a lot of ground in this episode. You know, Uh, if you're playing the the Stuff to Blow your mind drinking game, I guess you got to. You got to take multiple shots here. We managed to fit a Bible story in there. We had a skit with demons in it. We got into tool use and animal intelligence, a little bit of Chinese mythology incorporated as well. It's a lot

of my favorite stuff. Yeah, and and it's all ultimately Halloween episode because at the heart we're still dealing with the story of exorcism. So I'm looking up anagrams for legion and like like Leno's in the Stephen King's story. There are really not very many good ones. We got leg I on Okay, let's not really good but but still good. That just inserts the space. But we also got ogl in sounds good ego Nil, Yeah, I like

that one, Lean Go line Go and old Jin Old Jen. Well, those demons are gonna need a lot of names, because there are a lot of them. I think we must in there all right. Well, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, go forth and do so. You'll find them wherever you get your podcasts and wherever you get your podcast Just make sure you rate and review, make sure you've subscribed. It's

a great way to support the show. You can also get us find our episodes that Stuff with your Mind dot com. Also, we have another show called Invention that we uh we we highly recommend you check out this month. We have a number of episodes that have come out about caskets, casket science, casket history, weird casket inventions, well worth listening to if you're in the mood for more seasonal content. Yeah, if you're not subscribed to Invention, go subscribe now. Ogl In Big Thanks as always to our

excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, come on and ogle on in at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.