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Guinea Pig Iq Tests

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Swissgreys

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The most recent edition of Guinea Pig Magazine had an article about guinea pig intelligence and a couple of simple ideas for IQ tests you could perform with your guinea pigs at home.
Naturally both of my kids think our guinea pigs are the smartest creatures on the planet - just look how good they are at wheeking whenever they hear a knife touch the chopping board :))- so were keen to try the tests.

For the first test we put a large handful of parsley underneath one plastic cup, and a small piece of parsley underneath a different cup that was closer to the guinea pig, to see if they would travel further for a bigger reward.

For the second test we put a large and obvious treat (a piece of carrot) under a cup right next to the guinea pig to see if they would push the cup over to get the treat.

It was actually a lot of fun and very interesting.

Ruby:
Test 1- Why are you putting me down next to these stupid cups. I only want to be held by my favorite slave.
Test 2- see above :lol:
IMG_6870.jpg IMG_6874.jpg
Oreo:
Test 1- These cups look quite scary, but I smell food so I shall bravely investigate. Nope - too scary, I'm off.
Test 2- see above

Eddi:
Test 1- Ohh, cups, a new towel, and are we in a different room? Hmm, I must explore and weave in and out of these large plastic cups, and sniff the towel a bit.

Test 2 - Carrot? I definitely smell carrot. Oh look, someone stupidly put a large piece of carrot underneath a flimsy plastic cup. I will just head butt that cup out of the way and claim my prize.
You may all call me 'Eddi - Hunter of wild things' from now on.
IMG_6886.jpg
Lucy:
Test 1- This is new. I am going to lay down and look at both cups for a while so I can work out what the best thing to do is. That cup all the way over there has a lot of green stuff in it, so I am going to go over to it and try and push it over. I will walk right past the closer cup with that tiny piece of green stuff - not worth my time and effort.

Test 2 - Only 1 cup this time - no decision to be made then. I shall just knock it over and eat that yummy carrot.
IMG_6880.jpg
 
So cute, your Lucy looks a lot like my Cassie. Cassie says that it's obviously her good looks that make her so smart :D
 
That's great :)
It would be interesting too if several of us tried this to see how our pigs react :)

Oh please do.
I would love to hear how otehr piggies got on with it.
I was initially really skeptical, but they all reacted so differently it was actually a lot of fun.

DD of course is horrified that her precious Ruby technically did the worst, as she wouldn't even look at the cups - just kept running back to DD and climbing onto her lap. But apparently Ruby has an inner brilliance that can't be measured by such simple tests :))
 
Oh this is brilliant! I'm now very tempted to try this with Praline "Thousand yard stare" BigPiglet and Sundae "Food? There's FOOD?" Little Piglet...
 
I'll have to find some plastic cups and see how my two get on...although I suspect they'd use it as an excuse to bug the hell out of each other as usual, heh.
 
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