Do Guinea Pigs See in Color?

Do guinea pigs see in color? The eyes of guinea pigs are mounted on the sides of their head and protrude slightly, which gives them a tremendous angle of vision. This allows them to spot predators from nearly any direction (no blind spot for them!), which ensures their survival in the wild. A guinea pig’s vision is attuned mostly to movement, and they do not resolve objects at a distance, meaning that they have trouble gauging distances and heights. In short, guinea pigs have no depth perception.

And here is another interesting little titbit: guinea pigs usually keep their eyes open all the time, even when sleeping. It is a rare guinea pig indeed that sleeps with its eyes closed.

As to whether they can see color, opinions vary slightly. One idea is that guinea pigs are dichromatic and see colors as a human with color blindness would. This means that for guinea pigs it would be hard to perceive and contrast certain colors. Another opinion holds that guinea pigs cannot only see in color, but can actually distinguish color very well. Experiments have shown that guinea pigs are very good at distinguishing red, yellow and blue.

In his book “Guinea Pigs — A Complete Pet Owner’s Manual”, Horst Bielfeld describes an experiment using three differently colored but otherwise identical food bowls. He placed a food item in the same colored bowl, but changed the order of the bowl from day to day. After a few days, the guinea pig began to search out the colored bowl that contained the food.

But alas, to know the final answer, one would have to be a guinea pig — or be able to ask one.

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