my guinea pigs and dominance

heyyyyyyy

ill talk about the most recent thing that is going on between my guinea pigs.

first of all, ill do an introduction explaining some things about guinea pig behaviour for people who dont know how a guinea pig behaves:

guinea pigs, as most mammals, are territorial, specially boars (male guinea pigs). that means that two boars who live together can cause problems: usually they decide who is gonna be the dominant one, how? showing dominance: mounting, peeing eachother, rumbling (check rumbling guinea pigs on youtube), butt sniffing.......

it can go successfully: there will be a dominant boar and a submissive one or ones.

or it can go wrong: they'll fight (which is not cool) and they may end up hating each other forever🥲🥲🥲

fights dont mean that they will not get along, but it can be dangerous bc they can really get hurt, so u have to check  if they have any wounds or scabs.

okay, so now that i explained a bit how boars behave, ill explain my experience so far with nugget and aguacate:

when i brought nugget home, they were separated for like one day. aguacate smelled the presence of another guinea pig and was wheeking all the time, desperate and biting the cage.

when i brought them together (in a neutral zone where aguacate had not marked territory before) he started mounting and peeing nugget instantly, and nugget didnt bother, he accepted his submission lmao.

the first week once they were living together, aguacate was rumbling almost all the time, which is normal. as time passed, he stopped rumbling as often, and there were no signs of fighting, only the usual guinea pig behaviour of stealing food of the bowl which is being used and making the other angry lmao, but thats it.

the thing is, until about a week ago they started to "fight" a bit, not signs of real guinea pig fighting but dominance, and it seems a bit more aggressive than before, because it only was aguacate who rumbled around nugget and not much else. but now they both lift their heads up against each other, which is a dominance sign.

i really hope they dont end up hating each other or having a fight and get hurt (specially nugget, because he still is considerably smaller than aguacate). i think that they would already had a real fight if nugget really wanted to be the dominant and aguacate perceived him as a threat, but we cant be sure.

its also normal for nugget to show his dominance now because he is entering his 'teenage' years (months) and they may even change the roles, being aguacate the submissive one and nugget the dominant, but who knows.

thats it for now, i really hope they get along and just have an occasional dominance confrontation.

ill post updates about this. if any of u has tips, questions or whatever just tell me !! ill read any message and comment😁😁😁