1 Understanding Prey Animal Behaviour
- Unresponsive prey reflex
- Flight reflex
- Fight reflex (defence bites)
2 How to Avoid Predatory Behaviours
- Scent
- Flow of chatter
- Sudden movement and noises
- Looming and staring
- 'I am not seeing you'
3 Piggy Whispering
- 'I want to be friends with you'
- 'I invite you into my herd'
- 'I love/care about/appreciate you'
- 'Don't get uppity with me'
4 Picking Up and Cuddling Tips
- Hands-off pick up and handling tips (with videos and pictures)
- Cuddling tips for skittish new guinea pigs
5 Further Practical Guides for New Guinea Pigs
There are some tricks that may help you building up a relationship with new piggies by using guinea pig body language they will instinctively understand.
But as important is learning to firstly understand where the guinea pigs are coming from and what they are telling you!
This guide here tells you how being a new minted pet looks from the guinea pig's view: Arrival in a home from the perspective of pet shop guinea pigs.
Here is a very practical guide that tells you how to best integrate the information and practical tips in the guide below into your first and days and weeks with your piggies to take accunt of their instincts as much as your practical needs of care:
1 Understanding prey animal behaviour
Please never forget that guinea pigs are prey animals; they are not born as cuddly toys!
- Unresponsive prey reflex
Many prey animals survive by mimicking being dead or unresponsive. By far not all predators will kill small prey straight away. They often worry it or play with it. By not responding to being prodded and played with, prey animals may have a chance to escape with their life if they can make the predator lose attention or interest at some point.
This is the same behaviour that many people encounter first with hardly handled shop or breeder guinea pigs and that they mistake for buying a “cuddly” pet. We get regularly posts a few days or weeks into new ownership about “my guinea pig suddenly hates me”. It is not hate, but a guinea pig having learned to trust their new owner enough to start telling them their dislikes – typically this is being picked up and sitting still for prolonged cuddle sessions!
A guinea pig that is used to being handled will be interactive with you and tell you how it feels right from the start.
- Flight reflex
Most of us encounter the flight reflex when we try to pick up guinea pigs. It cuts very close to the survival instinct. Hence why many guinea pigs will never really like being picked up even though they are comfy with being cuddled. If you cannot avoid it, try to corner a piggy and guess which way it is likely to jump. Try to avoid prolonged hunts.
The best and least stressful way is to circumvent this instinct by trying to train the piggy to come into some pick-up conveyance with the help of a little favourite veg or dried forage and lots of praise. It may take some time, so be patient! Place the conveyance into a corner, so it is easier to guide a piggy there and limit the escape routes. A very gentle tap on the back end will chivvy it on.
You can use tunnels (hard or fabric), suitable cosies or upturned huts or a walk-in cardboard box that you fill with a bit of soft hay for the pick up ritual.
If you put a guinea pig back in its cage or hutch with your hands, always do this bum forward; if your guinea pig suddenly wiggles and jumps blindly, it cannot hurt itself badly as if jumps against your much softer body rather than an unforigiving surface or har edge.
See our pick-up video tutorial: How To Pick Up And Weigh Your Guinea Pig
- Defence bites reflex
When a nervous piggy is threatened by a sudden movement, it can defend itself by biting hard and deeply. This is a reflex behaviour that happens within a split second.
Children are often at the receiving end when they are petting a new and apparently complacent piggy (see dead prey reflex) and accidentally trigger the reflex by an unexpected quick hand movement or a sudden laugh – or just by a sudden loud noise somewhere in the vicinity.
Please do not let your children pet guinea pigs until your piggies have settled in really well and are confident and responsive when being handled. The bites can be deep and can happen literally out of the blue.
Please keep in mind that this is not aggressive or willful behaviour on behalf of the piggy! Dumping a piggy as a “biter” means that the owners have completely failed their pet by not bothering to learn about its needs and behaviour and that they are now leaving it to be likely euthanized; especially in US shelters where “biters” are unlikely to find a new home and will therefore not receive any effort. By advertising it on free-ads, they are exactly what people trawling for live prey for their reptiles are looking for.
https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/biting-and-what-you-can-do-biting-tweaking-nibbling-and-nipping.133919/
- Unresponsive prey reflex
- Flight reflex
- Fight reflex (defence bites)
2 How to Avoid Predatory Behaviours
- Scent
- Flow of chatter
- Sudden movement and noises
- Looming and staring
- 'I am not seeing you'
3 Piggy Whispering
- 'I want to be friends with you'
- 'I invite you into my herd'
- 'I love/care about/appreciate you'
- 'Don't get uppity with me'
4 Picking Up and Cuddling Tips
- Hands-off pick up and handling tips (with videos and pictures)
- Cuddling tips for skittish new guinea pigs
5 Further Practical Guides for New Guinea Pigs
There are some tricks that may help you building up a relationship with new piggies by using guinea pig body language they will instinctively understand.
But as important is learning to firstly understand where the guinea pigs are coming from and what they are telling you!
This guide here tells you how being a new minted pet looks from the guinea pig's view: Arrival in a home from the perspective of pet shop guinea pigs.
Here is a very practical guide that tells you how to best integrate the information and practical tips in the guide below into your first and days and weeks with your piggies to take accunt of their instincts as much as your practical needs of care:
1 Understanding prey animal behaviour
Please never forget that guinea pigs are prey animals; they are not born as cuddly toys!
- Unresponsive prey reflex
Many prey animals survive by mimicking being dead or unresponsive. By far not all predators will kill small prey straight away. They often worry it or play with it. By not responding to being prodded and played with, prey animals may have a chance to escape with their life if they can make the predator lose attention or interest at some point.
This is the same behaviour that many people encounter first with hardly handled shop or breeder guinea pigs and that they mistake for buying a “cuddly” pet. We get regularly posts a few days or weeks into new ownership about “my guinea pig suddenly hates me”. It is not hate, but a guinea pig having learned to trust their new owner enough to start telling them their dislikes – typically this is being picked up and sitting still for prolonged cuddle sessions!
A guinea pig that is used to being handled will be interactive with you and tell you how it feels right from the start.
- Flight reflex
Most of us encounter the flight reflex when we try to pick up guinea pigs. It cuts very close to the survival instinct. Hence why many guinea pigs will never really like being picked up even though they are comfy with being cuddled. If you cannot avoid it, try to corner a piggy and guess which way it is likely to jump. Try to avoid prolonged hunts.
The best and least stressful way is to circumvent this instinct by trying to train the piggy to come into some pick-up conveyance with the help of a little favourite veg or dried forage and lots of praise. It may take some time, so be patient! Place the conveyance into a corner, so it is easier to guide a piggy there and limit the escape routes. A very gentle tap on the back end will chivvy it on.
You can use tunnels (hard or fabric), suitable cosies or upturned huts or a walk-in cardboard box that you fill with a bit of soft hay for the pick up ritual.
If you put a guinea pig back in its cage or hutch with your hands, always do this bum forward; if your guinea pig suddenly wiggles and jumps blindly, it cannot hurt itself badly as if jumps against your much softer body rather than an unforigiving surface or har edge.
See our pick-up video tutorial: How To Pick Up And Weigh Your Guinea Pig
- Defence bites reflex
When a nervous piggy is threatened by a sudden movement, it can defend itself by biting hard and deeply. This is a reflex behaviour that happens within a split second.
Children are often at the receiving end when they are petting a new and apparently complacent piggy (see dead prey reflex) and accidentally trigger the reflex by an unexpected quick hand movement or a sudden laugh – or just by a sudden loud noise somewhere in the vicinity.
Please do not let your children pet guinea pigs until your piggies have settled in really well and are confident and responsive when being handled. The bites can be deep and can happen literally out of the blue.
Please keep in mind that this is not aggressive or willful behaviour on behalf of the piggy! Dumping a piggy as a “biter” means that the owners have completely failed their pet by not bothering to learn about its needs and behaviour and that they are now leaving it to be likely euthanized; especially in US shelters where “biters” are unlikely to find a new home and will therefore not receive any effort. By advertising it on free-ads, they are exactly what people trawling for live prey for their reptiles are looking for.
https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/biting-and-what-you-can-do-biting-tweaking-nibbling-and-nipping.133919/
