guinea pig history
Guinea Pig History
Guinea pigs are not pigs (although innterestingly enough, the ‘porcellus’ in the scientific name, cavia porcellus, means ‘little pig’), and they certainly aren’t from Guinea! Instead, guinea pigs are actually members of the rodent family and are native to South America.
The guinea pig has been domesticated, first by the local Native Americans for food, and then later by Europeans as pets, that guinea pigs are no longer found in the wild.
Today many people keep guinea pigs as pet and some even competitively show and breed the guinea pig.
The History of the Name: Guinea Pig
Ever wonder why the guinea pig is indeed called a guinea pig?
No one really knows for sure! It’s thought that they may have been called pigs because of the sounds they emit. One of their distinctive squeals sounds very similar to the sound a pig makes.
Other people think that the name refers to the fact that guinea pigs are somewhat built like a small pig – a large head in comparison to their body, a stout neck and a rounded back end with no real tail.
The History of Guinea Pigs and Medical Experiments
If you look up the term ‘ guinea pig’ in the dictionary, you’re not just going to get the cute a fuzzy mammal. Chances are, the term ‘something to be experimented on’ is going to be run across.
Guinea pigs have a surprisingly long and detailed history of being used in experiments for science, mostly because we share a certain commonality – neither of us can manufacture vitamin C.
No other creature has to get their vitamin C from food like the two of us, so that’s created a unique bond. In fact, the reason that vitamin C was discovered is because of research done on a guinea pig.
But don’t scream at science just yet – because of the experiments that were conducted on guinea pigs, we have medicines for a whole mess of things, including asthma, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and more.
Even the replacement heart valve, something that’s saved countless lives, can be attributed to the guinea pig. And while they’re not the experimental animal of choices (Because of low birth rates and surprisingly long gestation), they are sometimes still used in different experiments.
