Mathilde Coutant from the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences , Aarhus University, is among the founding members of ManyPigs, a new international research network dedicated to pig behaviour and welfare.

The network was established by nine researchers from across the globe who, over the past two years, have worked to create a collaborative platform inspired by existing initiatives such as ManyGoats and ManyBirds. ManyPigs aims to strengthen international collaboration and knowledge sharing within pig research, with a particular focus on behaviour and welfare.

The official launch of the network will take place online on June 5th.

ManyPigs seeks to bring together researchers across countries, disciplines, and career stages to facilitate exchange, collaboration, and development of new research initiatives. Planned activities include scientific discussions, sharing of protocols and teaching materials, cross-institutional collaborations, and discussions of emerging challenges and methods within pig welfare research. The network also aims to facilitate international research stays, internships, and cross-institutional student supervision.

Aims to bridge different expertices

According to Mathilde Coutant, one of the ambitions is to make collaboration within the field easier and more accessible:

“Pig welfare research is conducted across many different systems and disciplines, but researchers are often relatively disconnected from one another. We hope that ManyPigs can help create stronger links across institutions and research areas, and support more open and collaborative science.”

The network also aims to bridge expertise across researchers working with farm pigs, laboratory pigs, minipigs, and wild boars, while strengthening dissemination of research to farmers, advisors, policy-makers, and the wider public.

“I hope that the participation in the establishment of ManyPigs can strengthen even further our department’s international engagement and visibility within animal welfare research”, Mathilde Coutant says.

The ManyPigs launch meeting will take place online on June 5th at 16:00 CEST and is open to researchers and students interested in pig behaviour and welfare research.

Registration for the Zoom launch meeting is available here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/W6KFuf53TE-gA_V1-eJESQ