I am tremendously fond of guinea pigs, and I'd have them now if I didn't have cats.
Guinea pigs are pretty low maintenance and, if you get them young, do live for a while. We got ours when I was in fourth grade, and they survived until I was in high school—about five years, I think, total. They require almost nothing except for food, water, something to chew on, and a home with a place they can hide (we put a cardboard shoebox in the cage with them, which served both for hiding and chewing). They don't try to escape, really.
The down side is that they are less interactive than either rats or ferrets. Ours liked us, and would come over and squeak to say hello, and would purr (well, it's techically called burbling, but it sounds like a purr), and we could hold them... but they didn't really play. They were more like, uh, warm fuzzy potatoes with little legs. So if you want a lot of playfulness and interactivity, piggies are probably not the way to go.
That said, they are one of my favorite little animals.
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Mon, Jan. 17th, 2011 02:56 am (UTC)Guinea pigs are pretty low maintenance and, if you get them young, do live for a while. We got ours when I was in fourth grade, and they survived until I was in high school—about five years, I think, total. They require almost nothing except for food, water, something to chew on, and a home with a place they can hide (we put a cardboard shoebox in the cage with them, which served both for hiding and chewing). They don't try to escape, really.
The down side is that they are less interactive than either rats or ferrets. Ours liked us, and would come over and squeak to say hello, and would purr (well, it's techically called burbling, but it sounds like a purr), and we could hold them... but they didn't really play. They were more like, uh, warm fuzzy potatoes with little legs. So if you want a lot of playfulness and interactivity, piggies are probably not the way to go.
That said, they are one of my favorite little animals.