If you’re looking for a new animal, one of the main factors you should always consider is their ease of care. If you’re a busy individual who spends most of their days going out and about, getting an animal with high care needs certainly wouldn’t be the ideal option. Luckily for you, both hamsters and guinea pigs are fairly simplistic when it comes to their care.

There are a wide variety of considerations that go into choosing the right guinea pig. Introducing an animal into your home is a huge commitment and responsibility, so it’s absolutely vital that you fully think about all the factors that can influence the guinea pig’s suitability to you. We all want to find the right animal for us, but it’s also important to make sure we are right for the animal.

At some point, any guinea pig owner will sit and wonder about the name guinea pig and think about where it came from, and exactly what it means. Anyone that doesn’t know too much about their history will probably assume they’re simply named from their native home, and understandably so. However, this wouldn’t be correct for guinea pigs. Guinea pigs have no connection to the countries Guinea or New Guinea, so their names definitely don’t come from there.

The recognised definitions of the name Guinea Pig are usually variations of ‘a small animal covered in fur with rounded ears, short legs, and no tail.’ While this is a great little description of a guinea pig, it doesn’t answer the question of what their name actually means.

Just like with dogs and cats, there are a large variety of guinea pig breeds out there, and each one with their own unique appearances and quirks. When looking for a new furry friend, you may want to investigate certain types and how they may be best suited to you.

Many people have the impression that a capybara is just a giant guinea pig, and that’s not completely untrue! In terms of their appearance, behaviours and social life, they are pretty similar. Though the domestic guinea pig does have some differences to the capybara in their appearance, when looking back at the wild cavies which domestic piggies evolved from, you can see a striking resemblance.

In the UK, Guinea pigs are generally referred to as an exotic pet by professionals. For an owner, this distinction can seem rather odd. Guinea pigs are a fully domesticated species and are found very commonly among households. The average person would never consider them an exotic pet.