Yes — a little. But because they can’t pass large amounts of gas, a bloated guinea pig is a genuine emergency. Yes, guinea pigs can fart — passing gas is a normal, natural part of their digestion, just as it is for us. Their farts are usually very subtle, quiet, and odorless, so you’ll rarely…
Busting the most common misconceptions about guinea pigs and smell — both how they smell, and how they smell things. There’s a lot of misinformation about guinea pigs and smell. The biggest myth of all: “guinea pigs are smelly pets.” They’re not — guinea pigs are naturally clean animals that groom themselves constantly, and any…
Those cute face-hairs are actually sophisticated sensory organs — here’s what they do (and why you must never trim them). Guinea pig whiskers aren’t decoration — they’re specialized sensory organs called vibrissae, and they’re essential to how your pig navigates the world. Unlike ordinary fur, whiskers are thicker, stiffer, rooted much deeper in the skin,…
Smell, hearing, touch, sight, and taste — a guide to how your piggy perceives everything around them. Guinea pigs experience the world very differently from us. Their strongest sense is smell, which they use to find food, mark territory, and recognize you. Close behind is excellent hearing — they detect a far wider, higher range…
Smell is your piggy’s superpower — here’s how they use it to find food, mark territory, and recognize you. Smell is a guinea pig’s strongest and most important sense — far more powerful than their eyesight, and central to how they experience the world. Guinea pigs have roughly twice as many olfactory (smell) genes as…
Yes — here’s the colorful (but muted) world your guinea pig actually sees, and whether toy color matters. Yes — guinea pigs see color, and they are not colorblind! They have dichromatic vision, meaning they have two types of color receptor (compared to our three), so they see a more limited, more muted palette than…
The surprising truth about guinea pig eyesight — from their near-360° view to their blurry, blind-spot world. Guinea pig vision is a fascinating mix of strengths and weaknesses. Their standout superpower is an incredible 340-degree field of view — with eyes on the sides of their head, they can see almost all the way around…
Simple signs and an at-home check to tell whether your piggy can hear — plus how to care for a deaf guinea pig. To tell if your guinea pig can hear, watch how they react to sounds. A guinea pig with normal hearing will startle at sudden noises, respond to your voice, come running at…
Yes — remarkably well. Here’s how guinea pig hearing works, and why it means keeping things quiet. Yes — guinea pigs have excellent hearing, one of their strongest senses (alongside smell). They can hear a much wider and higher range of sounds than humans, detecting high-pitched, ultrasonic frequencies far beyond what we can perceive —…
Simple, joyful ways to bring out those happy little jumps — through treats, play, and a happy home. You can’t force a guinea pig to popcorn — those joyful jumps happen spontaneously — but you can create the conditions that make them far more likely. Since popcorning is an expression of pure happiness and excitement,…