Playing with pigs or orangutans via an iPad might sound like a novelty, but could this kind of digitally mediated interspecies communication change our view of the animal kingdom, and our treatment of it?

I'm not sure if the line is bad, whether Willie Smits is speaking to me in German or if he's just cooing down the phone to me. Turns out, it's a mixture of all three, but I'm not his intended audience -- Saima, one of 20 orangutans surrounding Smits as he speaks from the canopied centre of Jakarta's 140-hectare Ragunan Zoo, has him captive. The mobile range is impressive and the hooting of the primate, tender and chatty like a puppy pleading for attention, is clearly audible down the line.

"Really, they are like children who do not have a voice," says Smits. "If people understand that we're so closely related [we share 97 percent of our DNA] I hope they will become upset with the destruction of their forest and realise we are actually taking away their country; because they have culture, they have language and they understand."

Smits, who has dedicated his life to rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing orangutans back to those diminishing forests, believes it is possible -- and essential -- that we begin communicating with these creatures in far more complex ways. Using technology to mediate that conversation, he and Hanna Wirman of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University are developing tablet games in their Touch project that will one day pit human users against their noble relatives.

"We could even create a virtual orangutan -- by letting them play thousands of times we'll know scoring percentages and can let a virtual version play anyone online," says Smits. "People will see they have better spatial memory than us -- they have to remember 10,000 trees in the jungle."

Interspecies online gaming may not be as distant a concept as it sounds. Last year, US cat food manufacturer Friskies released its You vs Cat series of iPad games at SXSW. The idea is to flick virtual treats across the screen your feline combatant then bats back, much the same as they might scramble around the floor with a ball, a mouse, pretty much anything to use in their general annihilation of your home. It's a pretty straightforward concept, and one that leaves a cat -- used to having a much larger surface area to play with, confined to an area the owner controls. Sphero, a robotic ball controlled using smartphone apps, has been trialled with animals and iPet Companion allows users to remotely manipulate toys at US cat shelters to instigate play. Again, neither game feels particularly symbiotic, despite their intent -- rather, the human is the controller, using the game as a bit of a tease, as one might a toy mouse on a string. But what if a game could be truly interactive for both parties -- perhaps never perceived at the same level, but creating a balance whereby both genuinely have something novel to gain? What if games could be used to learn much more about the animals we share this planet with -- their thought process, needs and desires, how they relate to human counterparts and, in doing so, cause us to reflect on and question the constructs we have over hundreds of years built around these relationships to justify our dominion? When artist Natalie Jeremijenko developed Beetle Wrestler, an installation that put humans on a level with one of the strongest creatures on the planet, the idea was to form a level playing field across species. But what if animals could beat us at our own game?

"When we introduced Playing With Pigs to farmers, one said 'humans will always win because we're much smarter'," says Clemens Driessen, cofounder of a Netherlands project developing human-animal games to alleviate boredom in pigs, including an iPad app that lets users direct a ball of light around a touchscreen for pigs to catch. "He paused, and added, 'well, maybe pigs can win; they do have all day to practice'." 

The first empirical study to prove animals get bored was published in PLOS ONE in 2012 and demonstrated that minks kept in small cages respond three times faster to (even negative) stimuli than minks in "enriched" environments, and since 2001 EU legislation has instructed pig farms to provide rooting to alleviate boredom, boredom which results in damaging tail-biting and bar-chewing. When it became clear this would never keep a confined pig entertained, Playing With Pigs asked if it were possible to design a game that not only entertains the pigs, but allows their captors -- us -- to interact with them in a novel way that bridges the mechanisation of modern day agriculture and the social and emotional divide that allows that mechanisation to persist without challenge.

"The EU has some of the highest standards of animal welfare in the world, but it's a best of a bad bunch," says  Richie Nimmo, Manchester University sociologist researching animal-human bonds. "I think people will still be appalled by what goes on in slaughterhouses."

"Just playing the game will certainly make the concept 'pig' less abstract," Playing With Pigs designer Kars Alfrink said. "I imagine now the only interaction people have with them is buying a piece of meat in the supermarket."

While Touch intends on enriching orangutans' lives and highlighting their plight through interspecies gaming, and Playing With Pigs hopes to generate social commentary on farming practices, both immediately faced the same problem when it came to game design: how can we ever know what entertains a non-verbal audience?

We are not amused
"I tried to get rid of all the assumptions I might have about users," said Wirman, "because even though in some ways their behaviour is close to children, they are so different."

Wirman started out slow, putting peanut butter on reinforced touchscreens to attract interest, then assessing the orangutans' size, hand movements and sensitivity of vision and hearing, to devise games. After bashing the screen around and chucking water on it, the primates quickly learned it was impermeable, but did not show immediate interest. It's impossible to know how they perceive what's on-screen -- when presented with the image of a predator once, one orangutan approached with caution from the side the image was not facing. They do, however, seem to enjoy looking at other orangutans on-screen, particularly the opposite sex -- something Smits hopes will lead to better mate-matching: "You can use data of how long they look at each one to find out which they should mate with."

So far the games are simplistic -- touching items to make them disappear, moving items and memory games. The latter would be the most likely genre for an orangutan to beat a human at, considering their excellent memories -- but it's the only one they don't yet seem to have grasped.

If the founders of Apps for Apes are to be believed, touchscreens are key. The group, which has been presenting orangutans in US zoos with iPads, says the primates have been taking to it naturally, particularly those games featuring bright colours and sound. However speaking to University of Nottingham Malaysia neuroscientist Neil Mennie, it seems these claims could be overblown. He has found, like Wirman, that orangutans do not have a natural attraction to iPads.

"I use gaming apps, and Tsunami plays once or twice but gets bored," Mennie, who is using eye-tracking equipment to study orangutans at The National Zoo of Malaysia, tells us. "She knows what we want her to do. Sometimes she drags the blob over the screen, drops it in the bin and looks at me as if to say, 'yeah, so what?'. I suspect it's because of their hand shape -- the iPad has been designed for human hands and they have longer ones. If they had more 3D objects or natural colours it would be better." Mennie suggests setting up a game using webcams, whereby orangutans are rewarded for touching the screen at the same time as humans on the "other side". But it's the idea of sensory 3D smart objects that has Wirman excited.

"They like poking things with sticks and wires. I noticed one female orangutan playing with an ant for 20 minutes in her mouth, directing it on her lips -- if we had tiny little smart objects, we could do something like that." They started out instinctually using lips and tongues on the tablet, so moving away from a focus on hands could be key. They are also not used to sitting still, so anything they can take up trees that can survive the rough and tumble of orangutan play would be best.

Simon Evans, cofounder of street game collective SlingShot, says he can imagine bringing real animals into his games if the focus were on physicality, rather than static touchscreens. In Hounded, his team already use scent and dogs in an artificial chase of human players. "As a starting point, I think that would be powerful, a really deep way of connecting with an animal. A dog likes to chase you and I like to chase the dog -- we're two animals enjoying the same thing in the same way at the same point. I might construct all kinds of meanings and structures around that and that's how we're different -- my ability to hold abstract thought -- but at a basic level we're the same."

A focus on the physicality is of course quite tricky, particularly when you're dealing with 40 piglets "quite intent on destroying anything physical", says Driessen. So far, he and Alfrink are focusing on "early adopters"; daring piglets that show interest, eventually leading the group in a more deliberate pursuit.

At the end of the day, avoiding anything too artificial remains the main challenge. "We should try to get into the mind of an orangutan," says Smits, "rather than manipulating them to use unnatural ways of showing what they are doing."

Playing With Pigs' creators tread that same fine line, between enriching the lives of these animals, and simply manipulating them -- once again -- to a human entity's chosen end.

"We have to avoid creating a situation which emphasises how much smarter humans are than pigs," said Driessen. Even the question of using incentivising treats is an issue, the danger being we end up having them do tricks for treats. "Would the food reward detract from it being play and intrinsically motivating as a game?" asks Driessen. That would be too easy -- to create a symmetrical form of mutually beneficial play should remain the goal.

Us v. them: who is it for?
Good intentions aside, our relationship with the animal kingdom ultimately remains a selfish one. It is, historically, built around what they can do for us -- in agriculture and industry -- and today, what they can bring us in domestication: namely companionship. What we might learn from them is kept to the confines of a lab and technology is only used to mediate our relationship with them here, or in the mechanics of concentrated farming -- the positive aspects of technology remain the preserve of humans. Touch and Playing With Pigs' may on one level be aimed at entertaining humans, but the hope is they take away something more -- questions that challenge the social norm at a time when our view of animals is already evolving.

"Previously, animals were regarded as asocial, outside the sphere of society and culture," said Nimmo. "In the 19th-century modern pet-keeping emerged and people began to form relationships with animals that weren't centred on their usefulness as commodities. People began to play with animals just for fun, and that led to dramatic changes in the way some were perceived."

For Alfrink and Driessen, the hope is to use technology to bridge the gap between the two perceptions -- pigs as supermarket pre-packaged fodder, and real world pigs which are, just a few miles from those supermarkets, biting their own tails out of frustration and boredom in confined conditions. But what do the pigs stand to gain, and can we ever hope to challenge long-held perceptions through gaming?

"Absolutely," says Nimmo. "Change is possible in the agriculture system. It's through play we've come to appreciate that animals are social, not just biological machines. But there's tensions with using these technologies in the current agricultural complex. A shift in perception of animals using this kind of play could undermine the industry, and if that happened my suspicion is they'd be modified or withdrawn."

Already, Playing With Pigs has come up against harsh criticism from the public, and even its creators. "It's a mediated interaction," says Alfrink, "not a replacement for going to farms and having a look at these pigs. But perhaps it can serve as a lead up to people making that step." On the other hand, says Driessen, the game could inadvertently perpetuate the division: "it could create a distanced form of interaction away from the reality of the pen; or it could be a way to reconnect." He also admits the game can be misleading "because you phase out all the bad noises and only hear the joyful [grunting] ones".

Some argue it's unnatural -- even Wirman admits it's not strictly normal for orangutans to play ("it's something they do in captivity; in nature they only play when very young"). Likewise, natural play for pigs would be frolicking in the mud, but Alfrink argues caged farming is not natural either, and Evans that the human-animal relationship has always been mediated through technology, whether via a ball or a lead. We have already changed the playbook of what is "natural" by taking these animals out of their habitat -- does this then mean anything's game, or do these projects distract from the more pressing question of their treatment?

"Playing With Pigs sounds like The Matrix," wrote one anonymous commentator when developers asked for feedback, "as if we could make them believe through computer simulation they have a nice life outdoors, while actually they're crammed together, stuffed with hormones and antibiotics in a meat factory." Another admitted, "being ignorant to how these animals live and get slaughtered is what keeps me enjoying meat -- I find the less I know, the happier I am. Playing a game with them, only to kill and eat them, I can't help but humanise that idea, and how sick it sounds. Then again I guess if you're destined to death you might as well have some fun." And the most frank response: "I think it's kind of sick as it makes you remember these pigs aren't stupid. And yet, I love bacon." These will be the concerns of farmers -- do we really want to humanise a meal? Interestingly, one farmer presented with the idea of being a "gaming farmer" paid to play with pigs rather than slaughter them said: "Sure, I'd love that. My aim is to raise pigs, not to slaughter them necessarily."

Such a reaction is, Nimmo would argue, a result of our continual reassessment of how we understand ourselves as human. "Historically we've defined human beings against other animals and increasingly that's not tenable. Playing With Pigs gives us a way to understand how cognitively sophisticated and social non-human animals are and how they can engage in meaningful interaction. It raises questions about how unique we really are."

Whether or not people agree with the reasoning behind Touch and Playing WIth Pigs, both aim to enrich animals' lives. Yet the question remains as to how we can ever know they are enjoying it. In Touch the play enclosure is voluntary -- orangutans enter and leave when they want -- while pigs probably wouldn't do it if they weren't receiving some stimulation, argue the founders, just as toy balls are discarded in pens.

"The only way to measure 'happiness' is if they continue doing it and do it right, but it could be pure chance," says Wirman. "Then there's the challenge, are they only coming because it's new and exciting? They return, they use the games and seem to be doing alright, but it's very hard to say what they understand or if it's bringing joy to their lives -- how to understand that is a personal goal."

It's clear one thing does make them happy: bonding with real people. "I can tell you Tsunami is desperate to interact with her keeper," says Mennie. "She loves him and always wants a cuddle off him." Whether technology could be seen as a replacement for that kind of closeness, and for the lack of maternal care that has ultimately brought this about, remains dubious. It may, however, teach us to preserve their habitats, so no orangutan is separated from its mother prematurely due to human intervention.

The future of human-animal play
Enjoying each other on a base level, in a pre-cultural space, is best explored through play -- a practice we already share with animals (a  January 2013 study revealed chimpanzees share the human preference for "fair outcomes" in games). Asymmetrical games could deliver this for orangutans, whereby animals uses smart objects and human counterparts iPads, and Mennie and Smits want to see orangutans having trans-Atlantic conversations via Skype (Wirman already chats with her subjects this way). For Driessen and Alfrink, making Playing With Pigs open source will pave the way for other groups to explore ways to develop the conversation, and crowdsource a solution to the question: what makes a pig happy? How distant these realities are depends on our willingness to change the status quo and face uncomfortable realities about our unbalanced coexistence. The pay-off, argues Smits, will be well-worth the battle.

"I'm due to visit the first orangutan I saved, Uce," he says. "She's been living in the jungle for 21 years and just had her third baby. As always, she'll come down, give me her baby and we'll have a wonderful hour before I wander back into the forest and she back into the tree. It will always be that way. She never forgets."


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