Preliminary studies of grooming behavior of domestic American Guinea pig (Cavia porcellus)

Abstract

The present study was carried out to elucidate the grooming behavior under clean and dust environmental condition in domestic American guinea pig (Caviaporcellus). The domestic guinea pig was allowed to provide all necessary food items and water prior to the initiation of experiment in order to minimize physiological stress and the present study was carried out in residential place at Homagama during the period ofDecember 2015 to January 2016. The guinea pig was placed for 1 hour in the clean environment and allowed another 1 hour in dust environment. Wood shavings were applied to the cage in order to make cage as dust environment. Then number of grooming and time taken for each grooming in seconds in each environment wererecorded.As this manner recordings were taken for 10 days.Data were analyzed statistically using Microsoft Excel 2013 for Chi-Square test. Results revealed that the Grooming behaviour of Guinea pig was significantly high in dust environment in comparing with the clean environment (χ2 test; p<0.001).