Guinea Pig
Featured in: Year 1: Animals, including humans
Reading level:
Guinea Pig
Mammal
A small, vocal pet that loves eating vegetables and hay.
💡 Fun Facts
- They are not from Guinea, and they are not pigs! They are rodents from the Andes in South America.
- They 'popcorn' (jump straight up in the air) when they are happy.
- They need vitamin C in their diet, just like humans.
Name Story
Cavia porcellus
means “the 'little pig' that is neither a pig nor from Guinea”
What does its name mean?
- Cavia — from a South American native name for the animala Tupi word, latinised
- porcellus — little pigLatin (porcus, 'pig')
Its name is wrong twice over: a guinea pig is not a pig (it is a rodent) and it is not from Guinea (it comes from South America). Even its Latin name only dares to call it a "little pig", most likely because of its round body and squeaky grunts — and nobody is quite sure how the word "Guinea" ever came to stick.