A persnickety pig named Merlin has TikTok users going “hog wild.”
Mina Alali shared a compilation on the platform of Merlin throwing temper tantrums, which she says in the video is comparable to “a toddler.”
In the video, which Alali posted on Aug. 9 and has been viewed over 4 million times, Merlin interrupts his human mom as she records a video by pressing a button that seemingly sounds like “ice cube.” When Alali turns his request down and says “no more,” he doesn’t get his way, Merlin skulks out of the frame.
His fury doesn’t end there, though.
“Here we go,” Alali says, watching him with her hands on her hips.
Merlin heads into a room and nudges a door shut with his nose. Then, from the other side of the door comes the twang and vibration of a spring door stopper being pulled and released.
“Merlin. Merlin,” Alali calls after him as she opens the door in the final clip in the post. “You can’t have what you want all of the time.”
Still, Merlin boldly closes the door in her face again.
Merlin’s mischievous ways have only endeared him to TikTok, where his antics are regularly commented on and shared.
“The way he walks in and shuts the door is sending me,” a user wrote.
“When he shuts the door, he throws on headphones and plays ‘My Chemical Romance,'” one user commented.
“See how he closes the door softly and respectfully? ,” another replied, nodding to the recent TikTok trend.
Speaking to TODAY.com in a recent interview, Alali explains that she got Merlin from a farm when he was just a couple of months old and immediately began to train him. They currently live together in Sacramento, California, where Merlin can communicate with her by pressing buttons that say words for him.
“At this point, he communicates through buttons. He has a huge personality,” she says. “. So, you know, we’ve just been regularly training him, and he’s a lot more like a human than people realize.”
The verbal buttons allow Merlin to express his desires easily, from wanting to be held by Alali to asking for snacks like ice cubes, coconut oil and mangos.
“I tell people all the time … adopting a pig is basically like signing up to have a toddler for 15 years. He’s a hoot.”
Communicating has also allowed his tenacious and sometimes stubborn personality to shine through.
“He uses his intelligence to his advantage. He can be manipulative, you know,” Alali adds. “So he’ll scream when he doesn’t get his way, even when there’s nothing going on… Pigs are very hierarchical, so he regards me as his boss, but kind of everyone else is below him.”
Alali explains that as frustrating as this can be at times, she also finds it amusing and a testament to his emotional intelligence, which he regularly expresses by shutting doors.
“He’ll just go and choose any available room and start pulling at the bottom of the door to express his frustration… He’s like, ‘How does this feel?’”
Alali says she’s hoping Merlin can keep it together at her upcoming wedding, as he played a significant role in making it happen.
“We are planning on having him be the ring bearer,” she explains. “My fiancé did find me through my posts with Merlin. So we feel like it’s only fitting to have him be a part of the wedding because he kind of brought us together.”
Merlin is a matchmaker, TikTok star, baby teen in a pig body and much more, and is proof that pigs have range.
“He’s just the best thing that’s ever come into my life,” she says. “Every day, he does something that surprises me.”
This article was originally published on
This article originally appeared on www.aol.com: www.aol.com https://www.aol.com/woman-taught-her-pet-pig-040612708.html