Carl Klutzke (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sirvalence) wrote,@ 2007-12-12 16:27:00 |
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| Entry tags: | questions |
Guinea Pigs: Recovered
This is the post I lost earlier today: I was able to salvage it from my web browser's cache files.
1. I don't know that I've ever heard of any actual research being performed with guinea pigs, so why is the term "guinea pig" synonymous with "research subject"?
2. Are they pigs? If not, what are they?
3. Are they from Guinea? If not, where are they from?
4. Where is Guinea, anyway?
5. Why were British pounds sometimes referred to as guineas?
1. "Biological experimentation on guinea pigs has been carried out since the 17th century; the animals were frequently used as a model organism in the 19th and 20th centuries, but have since been largely replaced by other rodents such as mice and rats. They are still used in research, primarily as models for human medical conditions such as juvenile diabetes, tuberculosis, scurvy, and pregnancy complications." (Wikipedia)
2. They are rodents.
3. They are from the Andes, in South America, where they have been domesticated for 7000 years.
So they aren't pigs, and they aren't from Guinea, so why are they called guinea pigs? The "pig" part seems to come from the fact that they are domestic animals that are vaguely pig-shaped and make pig-like sounds. The "guinea" part seems to have come from the habit of saying that anything exotic came from that region, much as in the US certain exotic or weird things are colloquially "Chinese." (It's not because they could be bought for a guinea coin, because they are documented as being called "ginny-pigs" before the first guinea coin was struck: see below.) (Wikipedia)
4. Guinea is a region in sub-Saharan Africa. In non-scientific terms, it's the underside of that huge bulge on the west coast of the continent. (Wikipedia)
5. Guinea was the source of much of the gold used to mint the first British machine-struck gold coin in 1663. A guinea coin was worth one pound. (Wikipedia)
2. They are rodents.
3. They are from the Andes, in South America, where they have been domesticated for 7000 years.
So they aren't pigs, and they aren't from Guinea, so why are they called guinea pigs? The "pig" part seems to come from the fact that they are domestic animals that are vaguely pig-shaped and make pig-like sounds. The "guinea" part seems to have come from the habit of saying that anything exotic came from that region, much as in the US certain exotic or weird things are colloquially "Chinese." (It's not because they could be bought for a guinea coin, because they are documented as being called "ginny-pigs" before the first guinea coin was struck: see below.) (Wikipedia)
4. Guinea is a region in sub-Saharan Africa. In non-scientific terms, it's the underside of that huge bulge on the west coast of the continent. (Wikipedia)
5. Guinea was the source of much of the gold used to mint the first British machine-struck gold coin in 1663. A guinea coin was worth one pound. (Wikipedia)
