Hyper = Happy?

[errenscrawls]

In my intro thread, I brought up how my two new little boars seemed to be..not drawing-blood for-real fighting, obviously, but scuffling/roughhousing a lot. Later that night and subsequent nights, I heard tons of what I thought was borderline-fighting. I'm talking hearing the bars reverberate from somebody smacking into them. But I'd get up to check, and neither of them has a single scratch.

Now that I've been able to observe them more, I'm seeing that the scuffles are happening, but my dominant boy (whom I've named Becky) is responsible for around 80% of the noise. He's going nuts, wheeking super loudly, bolting from one end of the cage to the other, and jumping both in the air and onto their log tunnel. He also does these random shudders/shakes, and (because I was able to witness it) I know that banging-on-the-bars sound was him basically flinging himself into the cage wall.

is he okay? Is this what 'popcorning' is, or can it be a stress/aggression thing? It kind of looks like his (not yet named) cagemate feels threatened by this, because he runs away/scuffles with Becky whenever he does it. Also I haven't spotted any of this in said cagemate, so if it's a sign of happiness it looks like only one of my boars is feeling it.

 

[errenscrawls]

Sorry, I can't find the button for how to edit posts, but another issue I've noticed is that Becky is chasing his cagemate around the cage in addition to/as part of(?) all this. Again, since nobody's drawn blood or caused a visible injury, I'm not separating them...but is that a bad sign? Are the two behaviors related?

 

[Cavy Kung-Fu]

Can you get a video of the behaviour? It sounds like he could be doing zoomies which is something they do for fun

My Bella is the zoomie champion in my house, she charges around like a bull in a china shop! Sometimes she'll convince another pig to play with her and she'll chase them, stop and then be chased for a bit and swap again. Other times the pigs just stay out of her way because they don't feel like playing and she'll just run around in circles for a bit.

Could it be that?

 

[Reenie]

Sound like zoomies and popcorning. They also do a piggy train, where they follow each other round and round, sometimes while doing zoomies. I love it when my boys do this, they look like they're having such fun. Sometimes they are going so fast that they crash into things.
This is different from throwing themselves at the bars, but I've only heard of them doing this when they're trying to get to another guinea pig.

 

[Wiebke]

Could you take a video and upload it on a public setting elsewhere to link into here? A video uploading facility is too expensive for our forum, which lives from members' donations.

However, it sounds like you just have some very happy and lively boys that love to run around at breakneck speed (zoomies), crash into each other at the end of them (I call it playing dodgems) and that also love to do some mad popcorning - which is rather self-explanatory happy behaviour.