Crepuscular? The piggies or the weasels?
God, yes. My piggie thought that veggies made a sound very much like the magnetic gasket on a fridge. He’d “wheek” loud enough to be hear rooms away.
Before he had a glass box, he’d chew on the steel bars of his cage occasionally. “Bong, Bong, Bong, Bong”.
Lots of personality.
He tended to poo & pee in one corner of the box - kind of a litter area. I always wondered if they could be litter trained.
I’m sure they can be kept indoors, but I’ve always thought of guinea pigs to be an outdoor pet - kept in a hutch at night and put out in a pen on the lawn in the day (at least that’s what ours get). Can’t imagine the smell if they were kept indoors - they pee and poo a lot.
Gerbils are pretty generic rodents in terms of the smell and mess - they can be kept without giving them any liquid water at all (as long as they always have slices of cucumber or other moist, bland veg) - in which case, they make a lot less smell and mess.
I have had both and for my young daughter , they were kind of a step before getting cats and then a dog.
I love guinea pigs. They have cute little faces and they are easy to catch if they get out of their cage. I always attributed their squeaking to cheerfulness, although I probably give them way to much credit.
I swear gerbils tease you. They want to get out of their cage and then when they do they pause for a few seconds so you think you can grab them, then they dart behind the stove or they couch.
I dunno about gerbils, but hamsters simplly do not have the brainpower to plot anything. I think that they’re cute, and if you hold a raisin above a hamster’s head it will dance for it, but they’re not good if you want a smart pet.
If you’re silly enough to want a smart pet, get a Siamese cat. They spend just about all their free time Plotting World Domination. However, they need to get a nap in first…
I was gonna come back and say “piggies, silly person” but then I checked , and it turns out that
Bunnies are the critters I first learned the word for.
Indeed, hamsters are of little brain…but I have to put in a plug for them anyway. They aren’t all nasty and mean-- they have varying temperament, and it also depends on how well they are socialized.
I had a family of rescued dwarf hamsters (a mom and her three daughters) that were positively delightful. They had such individual and distinct personalities that it was fascinating to watch them: one of them would give me little licky “kisses” like some pet rats do, and another loved to play hide-and-seek with me in the pile of laundry on my bed as I was folding and putting it away. Yes, they were occasionally grumpy when they first woke up, but I can’t recall ever being bitten (the mom would sometimes gently “mouth” my finger without biting down-- and occasionally even move it away from the nest-- if she didn’t want to be disturbed, and would then come over to play later on). Plus, there’s something special when your hand is lying on the couch and a pint-size hamster deliberately snuggles into it to fall asleep.
(ETA: Plus, watching a dwarf hamster go bananas when presented with a puppy-sized Milk Bone is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.)
That said, I agree that guinea pigs are great pets, and generally more engaging and easy-going. Plus they live longer, which is no small consideration.
Maybe it’s just the specimens we have, but I can discern almost no trace of inner thought-life in our guinea pigs.
The rabbit is expressive and inquisitive, has discernible moods and interests, likes and dislikes. Has personality.
The GPs alternate between intense interest in food, and blank catatonia. They’re either thinking “CarrotsCarrotsCarrotsCarrotsCarrotsCarrots gimmetheCarrots…”, or sitting, doing nothing at all. It’s almost surprising that they remember to breathe.
Guinea pigs RULE. Nice pets, quite friendly and adorable as hell when they get excited and wheek and/or ‘popcorn.’ I have had several and would love to get another.
[misses her herd]
Piggers!
We’ve had several rescue piggies and they are wonderful companion animals.
Other’s have noted the personality traits and cuddliness, so i’ll check in with some hard facts and care tips.
Piggers produce pellet poops like rabbits. Barring food issues, or sickness these are dry, and will not stain the carpet if simply picked up and not ground into the rug. They will also occasionally produce special poops which they will then re-chew like cud. Piggers will choose a litter area and generally try to use providing you give them proper space, (2 ftx4ft per piggy please). They can be litter trained and will use the box if they KNOW where it is. Free roaming piggies will need a liter tray in every room or they will go where they feel comfortable. They ought to be limited to a certain room for free time though, and not have run of the house as they can get themselves into trouble with cords and nibbling furniture. Piggies NEED to chew to wear down their teeth, and will need their nails trimmed occasionally to keep them healthy.
When happy, they will “popcorn” which is a sort of shiver followed by a straight vertical hop and lots of running in circles while making happy burbling noises.
They need a lot of hay in their diet, pellets won’t cut it alone, and cannot produce vitamin C so make sure they get it in their water via drops.
I’ve had a lot of people tell me that’s not a good way to supplement vitamin C - it degrades fast in the water, and you never know how much the pigs are getting. A good-quality feed such as Oxbow has good vitamin C; also the cavy specialist near us recommends supplementing with liquid vitamin C drops directly to the pig via a syringe. One of mine will come running for her drops, the other has to be picked up and have it squirted into his mouth (though he seems to enjoy the taste, just can’t be bothered to actually voluntarily taste it). Alternately Oxbow makes vitamin C tablets that the piggies also like, though again you can’t always tell if they’ve eaten them or dropped them into the bedding. We also give the pigs lots of veggies that have C (green peppers, romaine lettuce (never iceberg!)) and occasionally as a treat a small wedge of orange (too much of that is bad for them).
In addition to what Acid Lamp said, guinea pigs are vegetarian, but with some restrictions in what they can have in their diets. Lots of hay is good in addition to the “pellet food” that they sell in stores, but a great way to get vitamin C dosage for guinea pigs is through fresh fruits and vegetables. A bell pepper is an excellent source of guinea pig friendly vitamin C and doesn’t have so much sugar that it’s going to potentially cause a problem.* Salad lettuces are good (no iceberg please), dandelions, grasses, and a fairly wide variety of other fruits and vegetables. There are some that are to be limited because of high amounts of sugar, calcium/minerals (cruciferous vegetables and dark leafy greens in particular should be somewhat limited), but there are lots of things that guinea pigs will eat. Ours, strangely enough, liked lemons, although they make the puckered up face after each bite of lemon; it was endearing but probably not the smartest idea for us to feed them stuff that’d make them pucker up so much. It didn’t stop them from eating it and being excited about eating it. There are lots of websites which give you more information about guinea pig nutrition, many of which can be googled with the term “guinea pig care” or “guinea pig nutrition”. “Cavy” is also a good search term to replace with guinea pig, as a lot of the sites use this as a preferred term.
Now that I’ve had a few guinea pigs, I’d recommend them heartily. However, I’d get a pair of guinea pigs, preferably of the same gender so that they can keep each other company on days when you might be too busy to play with them. Much like rats, they are social animals and like attention from both people and other animals. Ours got along fine with our dog, and (since the dog is well socialized) they formed an interesting relationship with the dog, whom they’d follow around when they got “floor time”.
[sub]*I learned the hard way that apples have way too much sugar for guinea pigs to handle. First time I tried it, my pigger ran around in circles like he was on a caffeine high for about 10 minutes. It was kind of funny in retrospect, but high sugar foods like apples should probably be avoided in large quantities.[/sub]
I had a guinea pig for eight years. Very long life for a little piggie, and he was an adult when I got him.
Anyway, GREAT pet. Loads of fun to play with, very affectionate and loved being handled. We used to make little mazes on the floor for him out of cardboard, with some nice crunchy lettuce at the end. Oh, how he loved the fresh veggies.
As mentioned above, poops are easy to pick up (to me, they looked like firm little hot dogs, maybe half an inch long and about as thick as a round shoelace, in little piles that were a snap to pick up with a paper towel). The one warning I would have for you is, they do love to chew. I still have books that are missing much of the corners due to piggy chewing. So, I’d keep cherished volumes well out of reach.
I don’t know much about gerbils, but my boyfriend has a guineapig. He used to have 2:
Piggies On A Towel! : The one on the left, the white one, is Pip. She’s the newest one and the one he still has. The one on the right, calico-colored, is Pika. She went to guinea heaven a few years ago.
When I met Pip for the first time, I thought she was so cute. She also made lots of sounds when she heard plastic bags, and also when she heard the fridge open. She liked to hide under towels, and every day she’d be put in a special little house/cage they built so she could get sun and some grass.
A neat little trick he showed me was if he pressed down gently behind her head in a certain way, she’d give a biiiig stretch and a wiiiiide yawn. It was adorable.
I echo the fact that they will pee anywhere and anytime, and she ate pretty much constantly…and pooped quite a lot too. I loved giving her some lettuce to nibble on.
I want a guineapig now, I’ll definitely get one someday when I can. I love how she would hide under a towel at night, and unless a towel was put down on the kitchen counter, she’d get ‘lost’ on the counter and be confused until the towel was put down, and she’d scurry over to it in a heartbeat to relax.
More Pics!
Pika Inspecting (And Nibbling On) A Flower
Pretty Pip in Spring (She was born with the natural ‘baroo’ look, they don’t know why, but it hasn’t affected her negatively. We think she was also the runt of a previous litter.)
