Toys for Guinea Pigs: Toilet Paper Roll Pyramids

A while back, we learned that one of our readers from Sweden runs a guinea pig blog of their own called Tresmågrisar, which had a toy idea we wanted to try out for ourselves: toilet paper roll pyramids. Our humans used a combination of toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls cut down to similar-sized pieces. The idea of using toilet paper / paper towel rolls as toys was also mentioned on Guinea Lynx (and previously reviewed by us), so we felt confident that cardboard rolls are safe for guinea pigs. However, we had our humans make one modification to this toy from the way our Swedish friend did theirs: while they made a paste out of flour and water to make the rolls stick together, we read that flour can lead to allergies and bloat if guinea pigs eat it, so we wanted to avoid this. Instead, our humans tried cutting up an extra toilet paper roll into thirds, cutting three grooves into each of these pieces, and then they tried to fit the main rolls into the grooves of these connector pieces:

How it looks from the back.

Then, the humans loaded bits of green pepper into each of the main rolls:

The best toys are the ones with good food in them!

Oh, I see it!

Oops.

I was a little too enthusiastic about getting that green pepper, and ended up knocking the whole thing over. The humans had to reset it.

What the heck?!

After that, the top toilet paper roll broke off and got stuck on my face when I tried get the pepper out. The humans probably should have cut slits in the rolls like last time, and put the peppers closer to the opening so we wouldn't have to put our faces as far in to reach it. Also, the human's idea of using connector rolls instead of flour paste was a good one in theory, but didn't work out too well in practice since the pyramid fell over and came apart.

We'll give this toy 3 out of 5 stars; something about the pyramid shape made this more of a fun novelty than just a single roll, but there are some design kinks that are going to have to be worked out to make this toy more enjoyable. (Feel free to share your ideas for building a better toilet paper roll pyramid in the comments!)