Hello, Victor the Red here. I was going to post about me, and sharing a name with Victor the First, but that was covered in N for Names. So I’m going to answer the question ‘how well do guinea pigs see?’ under V for Vision. If you want to know more, read this article.

How good is guinea pig Vision?

The books say that we have very good all-round vision, but we don’t see colours or distance as well as humans (but we see colour better than cats). We find our way about well enough, though.

Finding our way around the house

We can see things close up, and see shapes a little way off, the other side of the room, for example. So when Mummy’s at her computer, we know she’s there, but as she sits quite still, we forget she’s there, and when her shape moves it’s a surprise again. We know where the door to the garden is, because of the light, but we can’t see things outside unless we and they are close to the glass.

We don’t generally bump into things because they become clear as we reach them. And our whiskers help us sense them as well.

So we find our way around with a combination of smell, feel, and sight.

But our sight is still good in the dark, much better than yours, so we can find our way around very easily. And also we have very good memories, so once we’ve been somewhere, we’ll check it out again.

Roscoe and Bertie explored this house when they first came, and laid down the main routes for us to follow. That’s why we still go down to the front room, because their cages were in there once.

Seeing things in the garden

It’s much the same in the garden, with tall blurry shapes further off (I think they are called trees), and shapes closer like the veggie beds and Mummy’s chair.

We can smell traces of other things in the grass when we run around, but they fade quickly.

But we’re always alert for things that might come down on us from above, like birds. That’s what being a prey animal is about. And why we have practically all-round vision. We also see faster than you. That article in the introduction explains how.

So that’s Vision, from me, Victor the Red. And I think it’s my last post in this A to Z. But I think I’m going to be blogging more in future, so I’ll see you again sometime.

love

Victor xx