Hello, I’m Ludo, and I’ve been researching our Origins for you. This is the answer to ‘where do guinea pigs come from?’

Deepest Peru

Our ancestors came from the high grasslands up in the Andes, in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia among other places. According to Wikipedia, we were known to prehistoric man in 5000 BC, as shards of pottery were found with our pictures on them. Our Latin name cavia porcellus seems to be derived from a word like Cabia from French Guinea, and the Latin word porcellus for little pig.

We were very important in Inca and Maya religious ceremonies. I don’t think I’d like to be at the centre of one of those, though.

So we seem to have moved from the Andes up to the northern parts of South America, as domestic animals, mostly used for food. We are only distantly related to wild cavies now.

The naming condundrum

The rumour is that we got on board Spanish and other ships in the 15th and 16th centuries, and sailors liked to keep us as pets. They probably didn’t charge a Guinea for us, as the word ‘ginny-pig’ was recognised before the Guinea coin was invented.

But that is probably why many of our European names translate as ‘little sea pig’ or similar nautical terms. Although the Mediterranean ones tend to use ‘pig of the Indies’ or similar.

And it’s also why Mummy wanted to have pirates in her stories of Fred and George. I am the Pirate Captain, of course. She called my ship the Mare Swine, which was meant as a corruption of Meerschweinschen (Meer sounds like Mare), which is ‘little sea pig’ in German. The other ship, that George was on, was the Golden Guinea. [The Princelings and the Pirates – see panel on the right]

Guinea pigs in art

We definitely became popular as pets as early as the 16th Century because Queen Elizabeth 1 was supposed to have a guinea pig as a pet. There is a picture in the National Portrait Gallery of a girl with one. Mummy found many more works of art including us, when she was setting an art quiz. Some don’t look a lot like guinea pigs, but probably they didn’t sit still long enough for the artists to get the dimensions right. And anyway, did you see how they painted horses in those days?

Pictures from https://www.guineapigarcade.com/historical-art-museum. You might need to click on them – often the guinea pigs are right down at the foot of the paintings.

Guinea pigs as guinea pigs

Yes, we gave our name to humans being used to try things out. There is still some use for guinea pigs in medical research, most for things like scurvy and diabetes, because apparently we have special similarities to humans for those things. But mostly they use animals like rats and mice for medical tests these days.

Mummy has mixed feelings about this. She doesn’t think beauty products should be tested on animals. They just shouldn’t be used. But with medical things, a lot of medicines that help people a lot do need to be tested. So do harmful chemicals that we need evidence of harm to combat — like the poisons being used on crops that get rid of bees along with all the other insects. Mummy worked at WWF for a while, and understands the dilemma.

I wouldn’t want to have things tested on me. But if they didn’t do tests, they wouldn’t have found out that we need a lot larger doses of Metacam to ease our pain than cats and dogs do. So thank you to all the guinea pigs that have given their lives to science. I suppose it isn’t too much different from those religious ceremonies, after all.

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So, that’s where we’ve come from, and I hope you enjoyed it. Come back tomorrow to see what we are saying about the letter P – with Pippin!

Yours

Ludo (Pirate Cap’n Ludo to you 🙂 )