{"id":1148,"date":"2018-12-20T00:47:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T06:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2025-07-27T21:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T02:02:08","slug":"12-fascinating-guinea-pig-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/12-fascinating-guinea-pig-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Fascinating Guinea Pig Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Guinea pigs are social animals. \u201cBuddies<\/a>\u201d by Katrina Br*?#*!@nd<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s easy to see that guinea pigs are cute. If you share your life with guinea pigs, you also know that they have personalities and each piggie has their own likes and dislikes. But how much do you know about guinea pigs in general? Things like their life span, anatomy, dietary needs<\/a>, history, and more? You can see that guinea pigs don\u2019t have a tail and that they have large ears, four toes on their front feet and three on their back. Following are 12 more guinea pig facts.<\/p>\n

Guinea Pigs And Vitamin C<\/h3>\n

Perhaps one of the most famous facts about guinea pigs is that they cannot make their own vitamin C, unlike most other mammals. They share this inability with people, who also need to get vitamin C from their diet. Without vitamin C, guinea pigs develop scurvy<\/a>. Scurvy causes numerous problems, including swollen joints, lethargy, skin and fur problems, loss of appetite, and more.<\/p>\n

How Many Breeds?<\/h3>\n

The American Cavy Breeders Association and American Rabbit Breeders Association currently recognize 13 breeds<\/a> of guinea pig. The \u201cfounding\u201d breeds recognized were the American (sometimes called English), Abyssinian, and Peruvian.<\/p>\n

How Long Do Guinea Pigs Live?<\/h3>\n

The typical life span of pet guinea pigs is 5 to 6 years. This varies by individual, quality of care, and environment.<\/p>\n

The Sociable Guinea Pig<\/h3>\n

Guinea pigs are herd animals who usually prefer to be in a pair or group. Their social need is so strong, that some places actively encourage keeping more than one guinea pig. Notably, a law<\/a> that took effect in 2008 in Switzerland declared guinea pigs among the \u201csocial species.\u201d Such species are considered abused if they don\u2019t live or regularly interact with others of their species.<\/p>\n

Guinea Pig Tooth Info<\/h3>\n

Although most other rodents have yellow incisors, the incisors of guinea pigs are normally white. All teeth grow continuously, so guinea pigs need chewing on the high fiber of grass hay to keep their teeth worn down. Hay is the majority of the guinea pig diet, but they also need some vegetables, fruit, pelleted food, and healthy treats. Lafeber offers several nutritious food choices: Nutri-Hay<\/a> is timothy hay grown in the Northwest U.S., while Berrie-Bale<\/a> is a small bale of timothy hay that has some mint Hey!Berries treats hidden inside to encourage foraging. For treats, Hey!Berries<\/a> tempt your guinea pig using pellets of timothy hay with bits of added fruit or vegetables.<\/p>\n

What Do You Call Them?<\/h3>\n

Female guinea pigs are known as sows, males are boars, and babies are pups. The collective noun is likely group, as in \u201ca group of guinea pigs.\u201d However, this was declared boring in a guinea pig forum<\/a> a few years ago and sparked a discussion of other names to use, including \u201cwheek\u201d and \u201cblessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mystery Behind The Name(s)<\/h3>\n

Guinea pigs are known by several different names. The scientific name for guinea pigs is Cavia porcellus<\/em>. In South America, where guinea pigs originated, they are called cuy. In North America, Europe, and Australia, the names guinea pig and cavy are used most. Cavy is most likely taken from the genus name, Cavia<\/em>. But the origin of the name guinea pig is debatable. They\u2019re not from the country of Guinea, which is in Africa. One theory the Online Entymology Dictionary<\/a> suggests, among others, is that the word guinea comes from either the types of ships used at the time by British traders who brought guinea pigs to Europe, or from part of the trade route, which traveled between England, Guinea, and South America.<\/p>\n

Guinea Pig Eyes<\/h3>\n

Guinea pig eye color ranges include dark eyes (including black, brown, or blue) and pink or red (with a ruby pupil). The eye shine is red. Guinea pigs have dichromatic<\/a> rather than full color vision.<\/p>\n

Straight Poop Fact<\/h3>\n

Yes, guinea pigs eat some of their own feces. This coprophagy is necessary to guinea pig health, because guinea pigs who don\u2019t eat some of their feces daily eventually fall ill.<\/p>\n

Guinea Pig Vs. Cuy<\/h3>\n

In South America, cuy are raised as food and sometimes kept as pets. South American cuy are larger and less tame than pet guinea pigs. In recent years, cuy popped up in the United States as pets. Some guinea pig rescues in the United States, including the Los Angeles Guinea Pig Rescue<\/a> in Los Angeles, now try to educate people about the differences between guinea pigs and cuy, warning that cuy usually do not make good pets.<\/p>\n

A Danger For Females<\/h3>\n

Female guinea pigs who don\u2019t give birth before 7 or 8 months of age likely face a difficult pregnancy<\/a> if bred. This is because the pubic bones get fixed into place after that age, making a first-time birthing difficult.<\/p>\n

Guinea Pig Hearing<\/h3>\n

Although studies vary on the exact hearing range of guinea pigs, a Louisiana State University<\/a> website places the range at 54 to 50,000 Hz, comparing it to the human range of 64 to 23,000 Hz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guinea pigs don\u2019t have a tail but they do have large ears, four toes on their front feet and three on their back. Following are 12 more guinea pig facts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-guinea-pig-fun"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4357,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions\/4357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafeber.com\/mammals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}