The Piggy Hierarchy

When we adopted our guinea pigs, we knew that having two will be a lot harder than taking care of one. Debbi Noble, in her novel Guinea Pig Pets: Train Your Guinea Pig The Easy Way! explaints that this is because guinea pigs naturally follow a hierarchy when they live with more than one of their kind. This social structure is very strong, and pigs will fight constantly when there are may of them in a herd. This social structure has existed even when guinea pigs were still in the wild (23).

The hierarchy goes as follows (from most powerful to least powerful):
One dominant male
Several females (who all have their own ranks within this rank)
The younger, more subordinate pigs (23).

Noble includes this detail that really applies to me: "When two female guinea pigs live together, they will mount and nip each other, and one guinea pig will quickly establish dominance over the other. In most cases, the fights between two females are not particularly dangerous, but you should observe the pets carefully, especially in the early days, because some very aggressive females will continue to harass weaker females to the point of seriously injuring them or even killing them" (23-24).

Thankfully, Mochi has not killed Bean yet, but I do remember their first days together: non-stop rumbling, teeth-chittering, and the smell of the pheromones that guinea pigs give off when they get territorial. Mochi has established herself as the dominant one mainly because Bean was still very young and dependent. But now that Bean is getting a lot bigger, the dominance-establishing-moments where they'll act up again has been happening more often.

In the following pictures and videos you can see how Bean follows Mochi around, but once the meet face to face, they will both raise their heads and begin trying to establish their dominance by rumbling (which is a vibrato-ish sound similar to a purr) or chitter their teeth. Whoever back down first (which is usually Bean) begins to stuff her snout under the other pig's neck, showing submission.

Noble says, which I think is pretty smart, that "the best way to break up a fight is to put a towel over one of the animals and pick it up, then place that animal in a different cage" (24). Thankfully Mochi and Bean haven' gotten to outright bullying and nasty fights, but Bean has gotten a few nips on her ears and bled. Instead of using a blanket, I use my disciplining methods from before and make a loud "tshk" sound, when they act up or are caught doing something they aren't supposed to do. That way, they can associate that sound with the thought of stopping whatever they're doing. Thus they can follow commands even when we're not necessarily right next to them to force them to quit whatever they're doing.

For those of you who have pets, How have you disciplined your pets when they do something wrong? If you have more than one pet, how did you get your pets to successfully stop fighting?



Noble, Debbie. Guinea Pig Pets: Train Your Guinea Pig The Easy Way! N.p.: Shaharm Publications, 2014-2015. E-book.