Skinny pigs are a strain of guinea pig that have hair only on their heads and noses. They were created by breeding a normal guinea pig to a fully hairless lab strain. The hairless lab strain is believed to have been developed at a lab in Montreal.
There also another hairless strain of guinea pig is the Baldwin, which has hair only on its feet. It is born with a full coat of hair that falls out until the animal in nearly bald, and it is well-known for its wrinkles! (I know. It looks like a bat!)
Give me a furry pig any day! Those things are ugllly, even though they make the same cute noises…it’s cuteness packaged with a double dose of WTF!
It’s interesting to me how Baldwins are like American Hairless Terriers (born with hair and then lose it) and Skinny Pigs are like dogs with the Xolo gene (mostly bald with a hair pattern on extremities and back).
Freaky!