Guinea pig classified part of rodent family. Well, you might know some of famous rodent families such as golden hamsters, black hamsters, the cobayes, and chinchilla. These animals are usually common rodents species which picked as pet for people in majority, and known as a good pet to bring into your house. But – still – there are hardcore people who literally would choose “real” rodent species – the rats – that I believed, most people prefer to avoided it rather than keep it.
Do you remember one of Harry Potter character named Ron Weasley, he also become one of the “hardcore” people who loved to keep rat as a pet. Yes, it’s absolutely depend on people personal taste, and nobody has a right to judge it. However, although guinea pig and hamster are totally different species, surprisingly, there’s a lot of people that mistaken both of them as the same species. If, you my friend, was part of those people who didn’t know the differential between the two of them, I give you reference to read this article: how to differentiate the guinea pig and hamster.
However, this day my dear friends, we would choose guinea pig as our main topic: should we buy exercise ball for guinea pig? Exercise is one of the thing you should consider applying it on your animals – every animal need exercise, just exactly like people. Beside organic and healthy foods, exercise become the way to stabilize your physical conditions. Build up your immune system that would become the “great wall” to defense your body from any bad “intruders”.
Let’s not waste the time to long, here is: should we buy exercise ball for guinea pig?
Exercise for Guinea Pig
Ball become the perfect toy plus item to provide the fun and the healthy physical training to your guinea pig. Actually, it’s not only a perfect item for guinea pig but other rodent species at large. You must remember, it is important to provide physical items to encourage your little one to move their bodies. Why? There are illness and disease that shadowing your beloved animals which lack of exercise. One of the most common issue caused by the lack of exercise is obesity.
Furthermore, rodents were born genetically, behavior of characteristics and biological similar to human. In fact, a lot of human disease and issues symptoms are similar to rodents. Therefore, rodents such mice and rats are the most perfect experimental materials to replicate several of human conditions. From this theory, we could pull the string that what the future issues that happened to people who lack of exercise also could happen to your rodent pet, such as diabetes.
That’s pretty scary isn’t it? However, do you still think that exercise is not necessary routine for your guinea pig? All I could say that exercise is fatal. So, as a good owner, you must take the responsibility to take care of your guinea pig so that they could live happy and healthy forever after. Of course, there’s a lot of items that available to fulfill physical need of your guinea pig, but now, we would only discuss about the playing ball.
Type of Ball
Generally, there are two types of balls available in all the animal’s stores: first ball is the one that run by your animal from the inside of the ball, and the second one is the one that need the push to play with (like all the common ball). You could pick one that perfectly match with your pet necessity and need. However, there are things you need to consider associate with each item that I mentioned above: the first ball is one of the most common toy provided by owners.
It might look fun to play and your pet might also enjoy it, but there’s a view risk behind it. This ball could be dangerous. Your pet could get some physical issues (of course it depends on physical ability of the pet himself), such as dizzy. Both of the ball carry risk of running into the unwanted and dangerous places when you remiss to keep an eye to your animals. Yes, it could harm your beloved one, so always watch and supervise your pet while they were playing in everywhere.
One more dangerous research about the exercise ball that reviled by researchers are guinea pig spines was not designed to bent backwards which is one of the movement that possibly happen inside the running wheel. If you ignored this and let your guinea pig do this movement in a long terms, it could cause permanent damage and severe pain to him – it was really painful. This problem would not be found in hamsters or mice, because their spines are owned the ability to do the backwards movement.
However, knowing this dangerous risk that could strike guinea pigs, these days people are awake and stop selling the items that could harm your beloved pet. Rather than push your guinea pig to roll inside the ball and cause him pain in the end, you could give him a safe common ball that need to be push and knock out to play. This ball is proved to be fine and would not cause any physical harm for the guinea pig. This type of balls are sell in store in many variants of materials and colors.
From the plastics, such as carrot themed treat ball which is has a very cute design. But, the recommended one is the ball that made from natural things such as seagrass, solid wooden, or wicker. Sometime, your guinea pig would chew the ball, so, rather than give them solid harden materials that could affect his teeth, you could provide them the non-toxic dental hygiene material which would be really fun to play with. But, these natural material ball couldn’t last longer; it might only survive in several weeks, because your beloved guinea pig would chomp on it.
But, if it safe and could not give any harm to your beloved rodent pet, it worth to try isn’t it?