THINGS WORTH KNOWING ABOUT GUINEA PIGS

The three basic needs of a cavy are:

1. Eating
2. Breeding and
3. Fleeing from an attacker.

According to these this rodents have been fit up perfectly by nature.

INGESTION: The set of teeth, with it's exceptionally strong muscles and the always growing teeth, is a grant for ingestion. Even very hard pips and seeds can be cracked to get to good tasting contents.

DIGESTION: After the food has been soaked in the stomach, it gets into the outsized appendix, which, by the way, is about 15 % the weight of the animal. In there bacteria decompose the taken in Celluloses into carbohydrate parts. After that these parts are excreted in form of so called Cecotropes and then eaten again from the animal. Doing this the guinea pig can convert 80 % of the eaten food into pure energy.

PHYSICS: Characteristically our guinea pig has a quite ungainly body. The head is about 30 % of the whole weight and is carried by it's trunk. The guinea pig does not have a tail and big eyes on the sides of it's head. The front paws are flat with four toes and claws. The back paws are bigger then the front ones and only have three toes with claws.
The skeleton, with it's 34 vertebrae and 13 ribs, and the muscles enable the animal to flee from coming enemies.

FUR: Since it's domestication the guinea pig there have been scores of different colors. The main color is called Agouti (more see Breeds). The fur has two layers: the long, rough upper-hair and the fine lower-hair. The hair spread over the whole body, except from the sole of the feet. The roots of the hair are arranged next to each other and next to small sebaceous glands, which supply the skin with oil to keep it smooth. Some tactiles are on both sides of the nose.  

SENSING AND COMMUNICATION

You can learn to understand you animal a lot better by learning some things about it's perception.

Your guinea pig has five senses, like you: hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing and feeling.

All senses are well developed and quite effective.

Because cavies are fleeing-animals, they use their senses mainly for self-defense.

HEARING: Guinea pigs do hear a lot better then we and they can also learn to know certain sounds. They tend to hear especially good when it comes to food. Refrigerator-doors, the rustling of a plastic bag, or even the step of it's owner soon arise real storm of enthusiasm.
Because of the fact that they have such good ears, it's really unpleasing for them if we are too loud (especially loud music and so on). Knowing this now, please do not place the cage next to the TV or the Stereo

SMELLING: The sensing organs of the guinea pig are also a lot better then ours. If something good-smelling arises their attention, they crane their necks high into the air, sometimes they sit back and doodle to get to the goody. They sniff on everything that gets in their way. Their food, surrounding, owner and of course themselves. So if you play with you cavy try to avoid too obtrusive perfumes.

The guinea pig cranes it's neck to get all the smells.

TASTING: Our cavy is a real gourmet and likes to be fed like that. A culinary delight is expected everything which is green, for example dandelion, grass, parsley and dill. (More see Nutrition).
As I've already told you, our guinea pig has already lost some of it's natural senses during the long time of caging. Therefore you should get informed what it can eat or not. 

SEEING: Because the eyes are on the sides of the head, they have a great angle of view. They are able to see blue, yellow, red and green. Even during twilight they are able to see quite well.

FEELING: The tactile hairs are almost only used during the night. Like other animals, they are used, for not running against everything and to find it's way into the sleeping-hole faster.

GUINEA PIG TALK

Guinea pigs have a large spectrum of acoustic sounds, which, even within 400 years, are still not understandable to us fully.

But talking does not only include acoustics, but also body language.

There's also a wide range of movements, which could be useful for you to know.