LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Pigs: Guinea Pigs
built 276 days ago
Pigs have great economic, political, and even mystical importance in New Guinea. They are symbols of wealth. They are used to buy a bride, for example. Pigs are sacrificed to appease ancestral spirits. Some tribes consider them humanlike—and humans, piglike.
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Guinea Pigs don't even need to be spayed, but litter costs for these furballs are as high as for that of a rabbit. Costs for a guinea pig can exceed $645 in the first year.
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For the health and well-being of your guinea pigs, beyond the minimums, provide as large a living area as you can manage. Cubes and Coroplast (C&C) cages are an easy and inexpensive alternative to the small cages used by breeders and those sold at pet stores. Follow the minimum cage size standards of 7.5 or 10.5 square feet and you will see your own guinea pig's behavior improve significantly. Enjoy the new antics of your happier, healthier, and perkier guinea pigs in their proper environment.
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Even today, decades after Margaret Mead lived in New Guinea in the 1930s, the tribes there prize their pigs. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Jeff Tyler traveled to New Guinea for The Savvy Traveler, a public radio travel program and Web site in the United States.
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Like people, guinea pigs get bored living in the same old small cage hour after hour, day after day, year after year with nothing much to do. It would be like 'being sent to your room' forever, only your room is the size of a walk-in closet and that becomes your life. You have to entertain yourself, eat, sleep, and 'go to the bathroom' all in that small space -- until you die. Even if you are hauled out and allowed to 'play' with some other species periodically, it's a mind-numbing, dreary existence.
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Jones MN, Beedham RJ, Turnbull PCB et al: Efficacy of the UK human anthrax vaccine in guinea pigs against aerosolized spores of Bacillus anthracis. Salisbury Medical Bulletin, special supplement #87, June 1996 p 123
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Guinea Pigs