Guinea pigs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the domestic pig breed, see Guinea Hog. For other uses, see Guinea pig (disambiguation).

Guinea pig
Two adult guinea pigs.
Conservation status
Domesticated
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Rodentia
Suborder:	Hystricomorpha
Infraorder:	Hystricognathi
Parvorder:	Caviomorpha
Family:	Caviidae
Subfamily:	Caviinae
Genus:	Cavia
Species:	C. porcellus
Binomial name
Cavia porcellus <small>(Linnaeus, 1758)</small>
Synonyms
Mus por­cel­lus Cavia cobaya Cavia anolaimae Cavia cut­leri Cavia leu­copyga Cavia longip­ilis

The guinea pig (Cavia por­cel­lus), also called the cavy or do­mes­tic guinea pig, is a species of ro­dentbe­long­ing to the fam­ily Cavi­idae and the genus Cavia. De­spite their com­mon name, these an­i­mals are not in the Suidae, or pig fam­ily, nor do they orig­i­nate from Guinea. They orig­i­nated in theAndes, and ear­lier stud­ies based on bio­chem­istry and hy­bridiza­tion sug­gest they are do­mes­ti­catedde­scen­dants of a closely re­lated species of cavy such as Cavia aperea, C. fulgida, or C. tschudii and, there­fore, do not exist nat­u­rally in the wild.[1][2] Re­cent stud­ies ap­ply­ing mol­e­c­u­lar mark­ers,[3][4] in ad­di­tion to study­ing the skull and skele­tal mor­phol­ogy of cur­rent and mum­mi­fied an­i­mals,[5] re­vealed that the an­ces­tor is most likely Cavia tschudii.

The do­mes­tic guinea pig plays an im­por­tant role in the folk cul­ture of many In­dige­nous South Amer­i­can groups, es­pe­cially as a food source, but also in folk med­i­cine and in com­mu­nity re­li­gious cer­e­monies.[6] Since the 1960s, ef­forts have been made to in­crease con­sump­tion of the an­i­mal out­side South Amer­ica.[7]

In West­ern so­ci­eties, the do­mes­tic guinea pig has en­joyed wide­spread pop­u­lar­ity as a house­holdpet since its in­tro­duc­tion by Eu­ro­pean traders in the 16th cen­tury. Their docile na­ture; friendly, even af­fec­tion­ate re­spon­sive­ness to han­dling and feed­ing; and the rel­a­tive ease of car­ing for them, con­tinue to make guinea pigs a pop­u­lar pet. Or­ga­ni­za­tions de­voted to com­pet­i­tive breed­ing of guinea pigs have been formed world­wide, and many spe­cial­ized breeds of guinea pig, with vary­ing coat col­ors and com­po­si­tions, are cul­ti­vated by breed­ers. Biological experimentation on guinea pigs has been carried out since the 17th century. The animals were frequently used as model organisms in the 19th and 20th centuries, resulting in the epithet "guinea pig" for a test subject, but have since been largely replaced by other rodents such as mice and rats. They are still used in research, primarily as models for human medical conditions such as juvenile diabetes, tuberculosis, scurvy, and pregnancy complications.