Sunday, March 9, 2014

Can Guinea Pigs Eat Green Peppers?

We recently did an "Ask A Guinea Pig" post on whether we can see colors. In the post, we mentioned that there was an experiment done where guinea pigs were given different colored water bottles and food bowls to see which one they preferred. Bell peppers come in a variety of different colors, so we think there might be some potential to set up a color preference experiment here as well. Give us lots of peppers in different colors, and see which ones we eat first and/or most. What do you say, humans? (We love experiments that involve giving us food!)

As we mentioned, bell peppers come in a variety of different colors. We've already reviewed red and orange peppers, which are both common colors. Today, we're reviewing green bell peppers, After this, we'll just have yellow peppers, and the less common colors (such as brown and purple).

Do we have a favorite color pepper?
We're allowed to have green peppers almost daily. As we mentioned in our other pepper post, green, yellow, orange and red bell peppers all come from the same plant, but are at different levels of maturity. Green is the least mature, red is the most mature, and orange and yellow are in the middle. Green peppers are less sweet and more bitter than red peppers; as they mature into red peppers (or whichever color that variety of pepper becomes when it reaches maturity), they become sweeter, and the higher sugar content means you can't feed them to us as often.

They're all good to me.
There are a couple exceptions to this, however: "Permagreen Peppers" and "Staysgreen Peppers" are two varieties of green pepper that are still green when they reach maturity. According to a website that sells seeds, the Staysgreen Pepper was developed "to provide consumers with high sugar, green fruit that tastes as good as a mature red pepper." So, if you happen to get one of these types of green peppers and they're mature, you should probably treat them like a red pepper and only feed them to us 2-4 times per week.


I can't choose a favorite. I like them all!
Just like red and orange peppers, we're giving green peppers 5/5 stars!

9 comments:

  1. you guys love peppers! We kind of like them, but carrots are always better! :)
    XOXO
    Ashley & Wendy

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    Replies
    1. We agree, but we're only going by 0.5 star increments, so they get rated the same, even though carrots are our favorite!

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  2. We LOVE green pepper! Our humans give us some every night with our lettuce. We don't really like the other colors, though -- just the green ones, yum yum yum!

    -- Jasper and Oliver

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  3. we've never tried green peppers, only red peppers.
    XOXO
    Ashley & Wendy

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  4. we have a cat in our neighborhood. It wanders into our backyard sometimes. In the summer we go outside. How do we not get eaten???!!!
    P.S. The cat isn't ours.
    XOXO
    Ashley & Wendy

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    Replies
    1. The safest thing to do would be to not go outside if your safety can't be reasonably guaranteed. If you really love your outdoors time and can't part with it, you should have your humans set up a large playpen so they can easily keep an eye on you at all times. Make sure your human supervises you at all times while outdoors in your pen. It probably wouldn't take long for you get seriously hurt if the cat finds you and your human is distracted!

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  5. Playpen! Great idea!
    XOXO
    Ashley & Wendy

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  6. My piggies have moments and moments. :)) Depends on their mood if they will eat a green one or a red one. Whenever they get bored with one color, I switch to another one. For sure they don't enjoy too many red stuff: tomatoes, radish etc.

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