Guinea pigs in popular culture

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Guinea pigs have received much less attention from writers, artists, or the popular media than similar animals. Recently there have been more appearances of guinea pigs in books, film, television and other media.

[edit] Literature

Olga da Polga, a guinea pig with a wild imagination and adventurous spirit, is the main character in a number of books written by Michael Bond.
Fluffy The Classroom Guinea Pig stars in a series of early reader books written by Kate McMullan and illustrated by Mavis Smith.
In The Magician's Nephew (the sixth published book and first chronologically of The Chronicles of Narnia series), a guinea pig is the first creature to travel to the Wood between the Worlds by means of Uncle Andrew's magic rings – thus a guinea pig is instrumental in beginning all the adventures in Narnia. When Digory and Polly encounter the guinea pig in the Wood, they decide to leave it alone, as it seems "perfectly happy" to live there. Its fate is unknown.
The picture book "John Willy and Freddy McGee" by Holly Meade tells of the adventures of two bored guinea pigs who escape from their cage and explore their house.
The short story Pigs is Pigs by Ellis Parker Butler is a tale of bureacratic incompetence as two guinea pigs held at a train station breed unchecked while humans argue as to whether they are "pigs" for the purpose of determining freight charges (this story probably was the inspiration for Robert A. Heinlein's flatcats, and is reminiscent of the infamous tribbles of Star Trek).
The Fairy Caravan is a novel by Beatrix Potter which follows the adventures of Tuppenny, a young guinea pig who runs away from home to join a travelling circus.
Do Wrong Ron, written by Steven Herrick and illustrated by Caroline Magerl, is a story about a boy named Ron who can't do anything right. He has a Guinea pig named Charlie, and the story is puncuated with sections written from Charlie's point of view
The Guinea Pigs by Czech author Ludvik Vaculik is an allegory for Soviet domination and totalitarianism.
Harriet Ziefert and Arnold Lobel's Where's the Guinea Pig? is a chronicle of a little guinea pig who gets out of his pen, and explores the garden. It is a clay guinea pig who is illustrated, and he likes the garden.
"Pogo and Pip" by Jenny Dale is a children's book about a guinea pig called Pogo who befriends a hamster called Pip and helps protect him from danger. It points up the differing behaviour styles of these two rodent species - hamsters are much more active.

[edit] Film and television

Rodney (voiced by Chris Rock) was a prominent character in the Dr. Dolittle movie starring Eddie Murphy and Kyla Pratt.
Ray along with his rabbit buddy Carl, voiced by Jim Belushi and James Woods, were spokesmammals for Blockbuster Video in an ad campaign during 2002. In the above examples the animals were computer generated.
G.P. the Guinea Pig is a major character in the children's show Tales of the Riverbank.
In Power Rangers: Ninja Storm, the mentor of the Power Rangers, Sensei Watanabe, has been turned into a wise talking Guinea Pig and advises the rangers in that form.
Egg credit cards in the UK recently featured shopping guinea pigs in their advertising.^[1]
The character Magenta (Kelly Vitz) can transform herself into a guinea pig in the movie Sky High (2005 film).
Linny, a guinea pig, is the leader of The Wonder Pets, a television show on Nick Jr.^[2]
Mister Guinea Pig, a blue guinea pig, appears on Pinky Dinky Doo on Noggin.^[3]
Samson from the Cartoon Network animated series Camp Lazlo is a cleanliness-obsessed Guinea pig with a sensitive nose.
In a commercial for Snapple there was a parody of the running of the bulls with guinea pigs in place of the bulls.^[4]
A guinea pig is seen in a commercial promoting G4TV's Midnight Spank block in which the guinea pig threatens a sleeping man that it will the eat his remaining kidney (it had already eaten the first kidney while sleeping).^[5]
On the ABC sitcom "According to Jim" with Jim Belushi, the family owns a guinea pig named Fluffy who creates a problem when he must receive expensive surgery to remove an eraser he was fed.
A Guinea pig was used in the television program Futurama as bait for trapping Zoidberg.
Guinea pig was consumed by Anthony Zimmern in his show for the Travel channel Bizarre Foods on March 12, 2007.