What is the difference between guinea pigs and hamsters

They are still present in the world today where you might spot the short-haired English breed, a wiry hair Abyssinian with swirly rosettes in its fur or the long-hair Peruvian. Learn more about guinea pig breeds here. The beloved hamster is much smaller in size than a guinea pig -- but also a rodent. The most popular Golden aka Syrian hamster breed tops out at palm-size as an adult. The common dwarf varieties including Djungarian and Roborovsky are even smaller with adults looking like fluffy golf balls with tiny legs and nub tails.

Today's pet hamsters are said to have originated from Syria in the s. Sometimes these little Contently 1 cuties make a chattering sound with their teeth, which is much different from a guinea pig's oink! Both guinea pigs and hamsters come in a variety of color combinations featuring a caramel hue, white, brown, black, and gray. Most exhibit two or more colors on their coats. For both pet types, you can find short and long-hair breeds in pet stores and animal rescues.

Other than that, unlike guinea pigs, hamsters can eat various types of food seed, grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and insects. It seems to be a common issue for small animals when it comes to looking for information. I hope this guide helps you in deciding to go for guinea pigs or a hamster! Being GuineaDad, I have to admit that I am biased.

I would highly recommend guinea pigs to anyone willing to commit to taking care of guinea pigs for their whole life span. However, it is up to your preference as they both have their pros and cons. Based on what is written, I would say taking care of guinea pigs requires a bit more diligence, and time in comparison to hamsters, but with such a friendly fluff, it is all worth it! Based on my years of experience with guinea pigs and raising three girl piggies myself, I have never regretted a single moment.

I got so committed to them that I decided to start GuineaDad. You can imagine how much love and emotional support I get from guinea pigs. The last thing I want to tell everyone is to do enough research about the pets before adopting them. They totally deserve all the time and work!

If anyone else has experiences with hamsters, has more knowledge on any of the matter, or would like for me to add anything please share in the comment! You can find more information about guinea pigs and hamsters below, along with the infographics. We were able to learn a lot from Victoria.

Watch the videos in her channel to garner more knowledge on hamsters and rabbits! There are a bunch of differences when it comes to hamsters and guinea pigs. Although they are both related in a way, they are like distant, distant, distant, distant cousins.

They are both parts of the Rodentia order, but guinea pigs are from the genus Cavia family, while hamsters belong to the Cricetinae family. Guinea pigs can live for years, while a hamster's lifespan is years. If you are debating between a guinea pig and a hamster, this is something major you should consider. A guinea pig is around the size of a large potato and weighs 1. Guinea pigs are mainly on all fours and never use their front paws to hold things the way hamsters do.

Hamsters tend to sit up on their hind legs and hold seeds in their hands to chew on. Hamsters are more nocturnal, so you may not want to keep them in your room if you have a squeaky running wheel. Although not a lot of new pet owners know this, you can feed mealworms to your hamsters!

On the other hand, guinea pigs are herbivores, which means they only eat a plant-based diet. Guinea pigs also produce caecotropes, which is a softer stool that they ingest. However, hamsters are better left in solitude because they are very territorial. Guinea pigs have a penchant of being noisy because of their loud shrieks, screams and other squeaky sounds. Hamsters, on the other hand, can also be noisy especially at night since they are nocturnal rodents but their sound is not as loud as that of the guinea pigs.

To sum it all up, guinea pigs and hamsters are completely different being despite their almost identical physical characteristics. They may come from the same order of Rodentia but they deviate from each other when it comes to size, classification, number of species, offspring, life expectancy, interaction and sound produced. Read the table below for the summary of their major differences.

Difference Between Guinea Pig and Hamster. Difference Between Similar Terms and Objects. MLA 8 Angelo, Julian. Name required. Email required. Please note: comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.

Written by : Julian Angelo. Florida: Trident Press International. Our suggestion would be to feed them a lot of broccoli and spinach and by doing so, you will prevent damaging their health and reduce the risk of scurvy. Also, unlike the hamsters, guinea pigs have an additional source of getting different vitamins and nutrients. One interesting fact about hamsters is that they have pouches in the cheeks which they use to store some food for later.

Needless to say, every home pet requires proper health care in order to prevent some serious issues. Obviously, this goes for guinea pigs and hamsters as well and we will provide some information regarding the risks of their illnesses and how you should treat them.

The symptoms include wetness on anal and tail areas and watery diarrhea. This is the most serious illness of hamsters which you should treat quickly or else it may end up with the death of the hamster.

Other minor health problems in hamsters are skin conditions and they can be a host of some parasitic insects. The cage size is one of the most important factors to take into account when it comes to guinea pigs and hamsters.

Therefore, they can only be suitable for baby guinea pigs for the first few weeks, but you should definitely expand the habitat as they grow. There are various types of cages for guinea pigs. What is similar for both guinea pigs and hamsters is that they both need bedding in order to stay comfortable and healthy. On the other hand, hamsters are quite enthusiastic about climbing and they love to scale up the bars in the cage.

However, hamsters are very good runners and their small body gives them the possibility to run all day happily. It requires backward arching of the spine and as we have mentioned above, their body is not built for this.

Hamsters and other small animals have no problem doing it but we strictly advise not to use it for guinea pigs. We have described so many distinguishing attributes of guinea pigs and hamsters that obviously their daily care routine is different. We have highlighted above, that guinea pigs eat a lot more food so cleaning afterward takes a much longer time compared to hamsters.