With the popularity of keeping guinea pigs as pets increasing right now with a large number of beginner guinea pig owners adding their fits hog to their family, we have noticed a spike in the number of people asking various questions about taking care of guinea pigs.
Although there have been a number of questions about the general health of guinea pigs as well as keeping your guinea pig happy, we have seen one question being asked time and time again from beginner and experienced guinea pig owners alike.
This question is about the blue eyed guinea pig and with a number of photographs of guinea pigs who have blue eyes going viral on social media recently, we only expect the number of people reaching out about guinea pigs with blue eyes to increase as time goes on.
Although it is very rare, some guinea pigs do have the specific mutation within the HERC2 gene to allow them to have blue eyes and a number of breeders are trying to implement selective breeding with blue eyes guinea pigs to start to produce more of them due to demand for guinea pigs with blue eyes spiking right now.
Due to seeing a number of slightly different questions being asked about how some guinea pigs have blue eyes, we have decided to add our table of contents below to make it as easy as possible for our readers to navigate the article.
This should make it as quick and easy as possible to get to the sections of the article that you want the information to.
Can Guinea Pigs Have Blue Eyes?
Although rare, a small number of guinea pigs do have the required mutation within their HERC2 gene to allow them to have blue eyes.
It is unknown how this mutation within their HERC2 gene came about but breeders are actively trying to produce more guinea pigs that have blue eyes.
Until recently, even experienced guinea pig owners believed that a guinea pigs eyes could only be dark, dark with a ruby cast, and pink (albino) and this is why there is so much discussion online about blue eyes guinea pigs right now.
This is why there were a few statements from some very respected guinea pig owners about how you could not get a guinea pig with blue eyes due to them having never seen on in all of their years of breeding hogs but they have since changed their stance.
As more and more guinea pigs with blue areas are being bred due to so much effort being put into selective breeding, the more experienced breeders who used to previously think that a blue eyes guinea pig was impossible are not actively trying to breed them.
Keep in mind though, as with most new colors or patterns in pets, the price for a blue eyed guinea pig is drastically inflated with now due to breeders and collectors paying a premium for them but their prices will slowly start to fall in the coming years as supply grows to meet demand.
What Does A Guinea Pigs Eyes Look Like If They Are Blue?
As the pupil of a guinea pig is very large relative to the size of its eye, it can be difficult to see the blue iris that surrounds the pupil unless you are specifically looking for it.
A blue-eyed guinea pig will usually have the normal, large, dark pupil and then have a thin, light blue iris surrounding its pupil.
Due to guinea pigs being most active around dawn and dusk in periods of minimal light, they have evolved to have a pupil that takes up a large amount of their eye.
Unlike humans where our pupil is usually smaller than our iris making it easier to see the color of our eyes, the pupil in guinea pigs is usually much larger than their iris. Depending on the specific guinea pig, they may only have a very thin blue iris that is as thin as one millimeter.
Unlike the albino guinea pig that will usually have a pink or red pupil and iris due to a lack of pigment developing letting the blood show through making the pink eye obvious, you do usually have to look close for the blue iris on a guinea pig.
This is why some people think that blue eyes guinea pigs are overrated due to it being difficult to actually see the blue in their eyes.
Are Blue Eyed Guinea Pigs Rare?
Blue-eyed guinea pigs are currently the rarest eye color of guinea pigs with dark and dark with a ruby cast being the most common and then pink albino eyes being slightly more common than blue eyes in guinea pigs.
That said, a number of breeders are trying selective breeding to be able to consistently produce blue eyed guinea pigs so we do expect them to become more common than pink eyes.
We expect these numbers to change over the coming months but it is currently estimated that less than 0.001% of guinea pigs have blue eyes.
To put that in perspective, it is estimated that around 0.01% of guinea pigs have pink eyes with pink-eyed guinea pigs already being considered very rare.
Due to a female guinea pig being able to deliver five litters of between one and eight babies each year, we do expect the rarity of blue eyed guinea pigs to drastically change over the coming years though.
Animal breeders are extremely efficient at developing their breeding lines for unique colors and patterns in pets due to there being so much money to be made.
How Much Does A Blue Eyed Guinea Pig Cost?
We have seen blue eyed guinea pigs sell for as much as $300 but this is due to their price being artificially inflated due to collectors and guinea pig breeders being willing to pay a premium for them.
We expect the price of a guinea pig with blue eyes to fall substantially over the coming years to be more in line with their dark-eyed counterparts.
In our opinion, the prices of guinea pigs with pink eyes will hold around what they currently are due to them being so difficult to consistently produce in a litter but we don’t foresee any problems with breeders being able to develop breeding lines to produce guinea pigs with blue eyes.
That said, they will still be rarer than their dark eyed counterparts and we expect the price of a guinea pig with blue eyes to normalize at around double the price of a dark eyed guinea pig.
Due to many people who are hobbyist guinea pig breeders not even knowing to check the eye color of their guinea pigs you may be able to pick one up considerably cheaper due to the breeder not even knowing that the baby guinea pig has blue eyes.
This will be very rare though and a large amount of luck will have to be involved.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over the blue eyed guinea pig to an end. We hope that we have been able to answer all of your questions relating to blue eyed guinea pigs and help you realise that the current high prices that we are seeing for these guinea pigs will not last forever. We would not recommend that our readers pay the premium for a guinea pig simply because it has blue eyes as their prices will fall over the coming years.
