Why do guinea pigs make a funny jump?

Answer 1

Yes, guinea pigs CAN jump.. Ive had many pigs and they all have jumped. If they aren't trying to jump onto the top of something, they may jump because they are happy or excited. If you have a male and a female, the male may jump a lot because he wants to mate..

Answer 2

I was training my two young guinea pigs to jump the other day. Basically it takes a lot of patience but they get itnaturallyin the end!

Guinea pigs like to have somewhere to hide away, so you can teach them to jump by placing a small box on one side of the jump for them to run into. Also, ALWAYS give them a treat when they jump right but NEVER tell them off if they knock it down or run past it, just don't give them a treat!

I started by taking two tiny flower pots to use as jump wings and four chopsticks to use as poles. I took the pots and just placed one chopstick on the floor in between them to start off with. This gave my guinea pigs the idea that they had to go through the pots and over the pole to get to the box on the other side. Once they got this, I gradually started putting up small cross poles and straight poles to build up the height bit by bit.

I could then experiment with different things for poles or jump wings and adding things onto the jump to make them look more interesting. I also gradually changed the style of the jumps, such as long jumps, water jumpsetc. as once they got the idea of jumping the guinea pigs were willing to experiment too!

I read somewhere that you should not make a guinea pig jump more than 1 inch but mine jump 3 inches and really enjoy it (bearing in mind they are only 6 and a 1/2 months old and quite young and bouncy :P ) and they started yesterday so just don't try to get them to jump too high in one go..... build it up! I have also seen guinea pigs jumping quite high on Google images and YouTube so as long as you and your guinea pig are comfortable and your guinea pig isn't pushed too hard it should be fine!

p.s. I also tried this with myRussianhamster, although she only got to 3 cm! and sort of climbed more than jumped but I could tell she enjoyed it all the same!

Answer 3

Take a fruit or veggie your guinea pig loves and lure the guinea over what ever obstacle you want it to jump over. The guinea pig will follow the treat and jump over the obstacle. It takes a lot of patience though.

Answer 4

Well if you have a fat little piggy I guess they could... I mean only in agility courses for exercise. But jump OVER a beam, yes. But to jump DOWN, they can't . It breaks their little bones. Hope this helped! Good luck with you and your piggy!

Answer 5

The 'funny jump' you mentioned is probably your guinea pigs doing what is called 'popcorning'. This involves them running and jumping around their cage. Guinea pigs do this when they are extremley happy or excited about something. (For example, getting vegetables or having their cage cleaned). A popcorning piggie is a happy piggie. Hope I helped.