What was that thing on my guinea pig?

Question

Well, when I put my boy guinea pig on my desk, he rised his bottom up very high like 5 cm and then something came out. It was redish and pinkish and was 3 cm long! The next them I knew, HE ATE IT! Please help I don't know what it is and does your guinea pig do that?

Answer 1

It was a cecotrope.  It's like this:

Guinea pigs are grass eaters, and grass is a low-nutrition food.  Grass eaters have to take special measures to get sufficient nutrition from it.  Grass has almost no starch, sugar, or protein, so grass eaters depend on digestive bacteria to transform the cellulose into these nutrients.  No mammal can digest grass without the aid of special bacteria.

The guinea pig has a very long gut, to extract as much from the food as possible, and so that the intestinal bacteria can process the cellulose into useful nutrients.   Even so, the system is somewhat inefficient.  A lot gets excreted.

So guinea pigs produce a kind of soft pellet stool, called cecotrope, which contains digestive bacteria, vitamins, and fiber which the guinea pig re-eats to improve his diet and digestion.  This is different from the majority of its stool, which is just waste.  It is especially important for baby guinea pigs to eat cecotropes to get their digestive systems off to a good start.  

Rabbits also produce cecotropes.

The digestion of cellulose by mammals is really quite fascinating.  The guinea pig's method is the simplest; the most complex and efficient is the cow's.

Answer 2

As mentioned this is totally normal, but the color is not, reddish/pinkish is not normal. They are typically brownish/greenish. First, are you sure it's a boy? If it is, you should take him to the vet if that color continues.

Answer 3

As well as poo, Guinea pigs also produce Caecotrophs which are compounds of vitamins and proteins which they eat afterwards. However, these are usually the same colour as normal droppings and you don't often catch a Guinea pig producing one - its sounds like your Guinea may have produced something bloody which is a dangerous sign of an illness or infection and you should get him to the vets as soon as possible! It could also be that you've been feeding him too much beetroot, which can actually turn Guinea pig poo pink!