16 July 2021 is Guinea Pig Appreciation Day!

To keep the love of guinea pigs alive, Guinea Pig Appreciation Day celebrates everything that we love about these cutesy critters and celebrates just what it is that makes them great pets.

To learn more about how to take good care of your guinea pigs, check out PSDA’s dedicated webpage.

The Society for Companion Animal Studies (SCAS) has funded research by Dr. Marguerite E. O’Haire, Purdue University, to study guinea pigs in classroom settings.

‘SCAS provided instrumental funding to enable our initial research on guinea pigs in school classrooms. With their support, we were able to identify that the presence of guinea pigs in the classroom led to improvements in social functioning for both children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their typically developing peers. These findings led to an ongoing stream of research on animals in school classrooms and for children with autism. I am grateful for their support of my own work and of the broader field’ (Dr. Marguerite E. O’Haire)

Read more about Dr. O’Haire’s research here: Animal-Assisted Intervention for Autism