I have finally worked my way through my current big article series 'The Herd, The Group and I' down to a look at boars and what makes them tick for the conclusion of the series.
The article series takes a closer look at social identity and the complex social life guinea pigs are wired to navigate, and at how their still lurking wild ancestor instincts and then the domesticated species behaviours come out in a pet setting, which is challenging guinea pigs in new ways yet again. A lot of their natural social behaviours and needs are still there but they are often overlooked or misinterpreted by pet owners; resulting in piggy problems... Understanding a bit more about where our piggies come from will hopefully help us with how we look at and how we understand our own pets.
So far, nobody has ever looked at every day pet guinea pig behaviours and problems from a species perspective in that depth. Any research focuses either on either wild guinea pig species, their biology and genome, on how domestic guinea pigs differ from their (still thriving) wild ancestor species (the montane guinea pigs/cavia tschudii up mainly in the middle reaches of the Andes) and how a hard of domestic guinea pigs behave when left to their own devices in a large grassy space without direct human intervention; but nobody has yet tried to link what we see in our pets directly back to their heritage. The article series will hopefully start a bit of a discussion and make owners look at their pets as a species in their own right and with their own thousands of years' old heritage that is still well alive and present.
The boar article will cover my next two instalments; there is obviously quite a bit to say about them! I am however still short of boar pairs, trios and boars-only interactive pictures of my own and would like to ask you whether you would kindly offer me some to use as illustration for my article. They will be of course credited to your forum name, as on previous occasions. Crisp pictures of boars interacting with each other would be preferred! The ultimate selection is down to my editor and how much space they have.
The article series takes a closer look at social identity and the complex social life guinea pigs are wired to navigate, and at how their still lurking wild ancestor instincts and then the domesticated species behaviours come out in a pet setting, which is challenging guinea pigs in new ways yet again. A lot of their natural social behaviours and needs are still there but they are often overlooked or misinterpreted by pet owners; resulting in piggy problems... Understanding a bit more about where our piggies come from will hopefully help us with how we look at and how we understand our own pets.
So far, nobody has ever looked at every day pet guinea pig behaviours and problems from a species perspective in that depth. Any research focuses either on either wild guinea pig species, their biology and genome, on how domestic guinea pigs differ from their (still thriving) wild ancestor species (the montane guinea pigs/cavia tschudii up mainly in the middle reaches of the Andes) and how a hard of domestic guinea pigs behave when left to their own devices in a large grassy space without direct human intervention; but nobody has yet tried to link what we see in our pets directly back to their heritage. The article series will hopefully start a bit of a discussion and make owners look at their pets as a species in their own right and with their own thousands of years' old heritage that is still well alive and present.
The boar article will cover my next two instalments; there is obviously quite a bit to say about them! I am however still short of boar pairs, trios and boars-only interactive pictures of my own and would like to ask you whether you would kindly offer me some to use as illustration for my article. They will be of course credited to your forum name, as on previous occasions. Crisp pictures of boars interacting with each other would be preferred! The ultimate selection is down to my editor and how much space they have.
but they do still do all the dominance performances of other boars! Lovely brotherly bond they have going on though!
