22/04/2022
Cavia porcellus is not found naturally in the wild; it is likely descended from closely related species of cavies, such as C. aperea, C. fulgida, and C. tschudii, which are still commonly found in various regions of South America.[2] Studies from 2007 to 2010 applied molecular markers,[6][7] and studied the skull and skeletal morphology of current and mummified animals,[8] thereby revealing the ancestor to most likely be C. tschudii. Some species of cavy identified in the 20th century, such as C. anolaimae and C. guianae, may be domestic guinea pigs that have become feral by reintroduction into the wild.[9]
Wild cavies are found on grassy plains and occupy an ecological niche similar to that of cattle. They are social animals, living in the wild in small groups ("herds") that consist of several females ("sows"), a male ("boar"), and their young ("pups" not "piglets", a break with the preceding porcine nomenclature). Herds of animals move together, eating grass or other vegetation, yet do not store food.[10] While they do not burrow themselves or build nests, they frequently seek shelter in the burrows of other animals, as well as in crevices and tunnels formed by vegetation.[10] They are crepuscular and tend to be most active during dawn and dusk, when it is harder for predators to spot them.[11]
Regionally known as cuy, the guinea pig was first domesticated as early as 5000 BC for food by tribes in the Andean region of South America (the present-day southern part of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia),[12] some thousands of years after the domestication of the South American camelids.[13] Statues dating from circa 500 BC to 500 AD that depict guinea pigs have been unearthed in archaeological digs in Peru and Ecuador.[14] The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped animals and often depicted the guinea pig in their art.[15]
From about 1200 to the Spanish conquest in 1532, the indigenous peoples used selective breeding to develop many varieties of domestic guinea pigs, which formed the basis for some of the modern domestic breeds.[9] They continue to be a food source in the region; many households in the Andean highlands raise the animal, which subsists on the family's vegetable scraps.[16]
Folklore traditions involving guinea pigs are numerous; they are exchanged as gifts, used in customary social and religious ceremonies, and frequently referred to in spoken metaphors.[17] They also are used in traditional healing rituals by folk doctors, or curanderos, who use the animals to diagnose diseases such as jaundice, rheumatism, arthritis, and typhus.[18] They are rubbed against the bodies of the sick, and are seen as a supernatural medium.[19] Black guinea pigs are considered especially useful for diagnoses.[20] The animal may be cut open and its entrails examined to determine whether the cure was effective.[21] These methods are widely accepted in many parts of the Andes, where Western medicine is either unavailable or distrusted.[22]
Spanish, Dutch, and English traders took guinea pigs to Europe, where they quickly became popular as exotic pets among the upper classes and royalty, including Queen Elizabeth I.[12] The earliest known written account of the guinea pig dates from 1547, in a description of the animal from Santo Domingo. Because cavies are not native to Hispaniola, the animal was believed to have been earlier introduced there by Spanish travelers.[2] However, based on more recent excavations on West Indian islands, the animal must have been introduced to the Caribbean around 500 BC by ceramic-making horticulturalists from South America.[23] It was present in the Ostionoid period on Puerto Rico, for example, long before the advent of the Spaniards.[24]
The guinea pig was first described in the West in 1554 by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner.[25] Its binomial scientific name was first used by Erxleben in 1777; it is an amalgam of Pallas' generic designation (1766) and Linnaeus' specific conferral (1758).[2]
The earliest-known European illustration of a domestic guinea pig is a painting (artist unknown) in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London, dated to 1580, which shows a girl in typical Elizabethan dress holding a tortoise-shell guinea pig in her hands. She is flanked by her two brothers, one of whom holds a pet bird.[26] The picture dates from the same period as the oldest recorded guinea pig remains in England, which are a partial cavy skeleton found at Hill Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in Essex, and dated to around 1575.
