How Many? Do pigs know if there's other pigs in the room?

[4boipigs]

Do guinea pigs know if there are others around? For example, I have a 6 foot folding table with one cage with 2 boys on top, and underneath is my other cage with my other 2 boys. Do the boys know that there are others very close by?

 

[bpatters]

Probably, but you'd have to ask them. And I'd think the likelihood of their knowing other pigs are around would be greater if you've got boys in cages close to girls. With all boys, the boar perfume may be strong enough that they don't realize there are others.

 

[GracieLollie]

Our little girl just recently passed away..... we found another little one. Put her in another room for a day and a half, Libbie seemed to not know. Put her impromptu cage right next to Libbie's. She paid no attention. We had them do a little neutral time on the ground to meet. Libbie barely paid attention to her, she ate her treat, the little one doesn't have a clue what treats are even though we give a piece every time we give to Lollie (4x per day a different piece of something) then, she finally smelled her and vice versa but still seemed fairly uninterested. I went off on a slight tangent there, but in the end they probably know but don't care. Which surprises me!

 

[4boipigs]

Our little girl just recently passed away..... we found another little one. Put her in another room for a day and a half, Libbie seemed to not know. Put her impromptu cage right next to Libbie's. She paid no attention. We had them do a little neutral time on the ground to meet. Libbie barely paid attention to her, she ate her treat, the little one doesn't have a clue what treats are even though we give a piece every time we give to Lollie (4x per day a different piece of something) then, she finally smelled her and vice versa but still seemed fairly uninterested. I went off on a slight tangent there, but in the end they probably know but don't care. Which surprises me!

That's similar to what happened with my boys. After Bruin was pts, I moved Little Bear's cage next to Chico and Amigo. They either didn't care, or didn't know they were there. Little Bear was still sad and lonely even next to the other boys.

 

[SSLee]

A couple of years ago, I boarded my girl piggies at a rabbit rescue when I went on vacation. Upon picking them up, the volunteer told me my girls were very vocal and were always chattering with the other piggies. I'm sure my girls didn't even want to go home, they probably loved having a busy social life with the other piggies across the aisle. Unfortunately one has since passed and my other original piggy, Lily, has stopped making any noise. But in their case, my girls did know there were other piggies in the room.

 

[Soecara]

It does seem like my guinea pigs are aware there are other guinea pigs in the room, but they really don't seem to care.

The times I have noticed that they seem to care about there being other guinea pigs around is when their cage mate passes leaving them on their own, then I have seen two of my boys trying to look over the side of the cage closest to the other guinea pigs (also boars) and spending all of their time in that end of the cage (opposite their typical hiding spot). These are the two boys who really did not cope well at being alone at all, and I ended up introducing them to new cage mates very quickly as a result.

The only other time I noticed that they seem to care about their neighbours was when I had two girls relocate their hides right next to the shared wall and both jump on top of the hides to nose boop each other, it was an impressive co-ordinated effort. I have since introduced those two pairs (girl + neutered boar, and two girls) to make a quad and those two nose boop-ing girls are the best of friends now, always in the hideys together and following each other around.

Other then those rare cases I have never seen them "care" about their neighbours in the 10 years I have owned guinea pigs.