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What are guinea pigs used for? Detailed answer
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What are guinea pigs used for?
For food.
Nowadays, guinea pigs are practically no longer used for vivisection, but Peruvians annually eat up to 65 million of these animals. Guinea pigs are also eaten in Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador. Apparently, "pork" cheeks are considered a delicacy.
Ninety-nine percent of laboratory animals are mice and rats. Today, many more chickens and rabbits are used as "guinea pigs" than guinea pigs.
Mice and rats are much easier to manipulate at the genetic level, plus a much wider range of human conditions can be modeled on them than on guinea pigs, the common victims of medical research in the 1890th century. So, in XNUMX, with the help of guinea pigs, an antitoxin against diphtheria was discovered, which saved the lives of millions of children.
One area of medicine where guinea pigs are still used as experimental animals is the study of anaphylactic shock. They are also used in nutrition studies of various foods, since guinea pigs are the only mammals (apart from primates) who are unable to synthesize their own vitamin C, and therefore they must absorb it with food.
The common guinea pig weighs an average of 250 to 750 grams, but researchers from the Agrarian University of La Molina, located on the outskirts of Lima, the capital of Peru, managed to breed guinea pigs weighing a kilogram. Scientists hope that these products will eventually gain immense popularity in the export market: after all, guinea pig meat is low-fat, practically free of cholesterol and tastes, in general, reminiscent of rabbit.
In Peru, these animals are kept right in the kitchens - according to the ancient belief of the indigenous inhabitants of the Andes, guinea pigs need smoke - and local healers use them to diagnose various diseases: it is believed that if you press a guinea pig to the body of a patient, the rodent will squeak when it feels nearby source of disease. In the main cathedral of the Peruvian city of Cusco, you can see the painting "The Last Supper" in the Latin American style: Jesus with the disciples around the table, and in the middle - a dish with a guinea pig.
In 2003, archaeologists in Venezuela discovered the fossilized remains of a huge, guinea pig-like animal that lived eight million years ago. Phoberomys pattersoni was about the size of a cow and weighed 1400 times the average domestic guinea pig.
No one knows where the name "guinea pig" came from. The most plausible version sounds like this: these rodents came to Europe from South America through the West African port in Guinea.
Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:
How many apples should you eat?
Scientists believe that it is required to eat at least 60 kg of apples per year, that is, at least one apple a day. Apples do not cure this or that disease, but improve the vital activity of the whole organism.
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