Cavies in Congo

What next? Cane rats in Colombia?

This picture really made me sit up and take notice when I saw it at CIAT’s Flickr photostream. I had absolutely no idea that people in Kivu, DR Congo, kept guinea pigs as mini-livestock, and a simple Google search turned up almost nothing of relevance. I went a bit deeper, and unearthed an article — Think big with minilivestock — in Spore from February 2008. That told me that in Kivu women often breed guinea pigs to provide their children with animal protein, which is otherwise not available to these most vulnerable members of the household. The article also says:

Throughout Central and West Africa and as far east as DRC and Tanzania, as well as in Haiti (Caribbean), small-scale guinea pig farming based on a few animals contributes to food security. It is a relatively easy activity, aside from problems caused by inbreeding which can eventually affect the health and weight of animals.

But it doesn’t tell me how this started, or what CIAT’s involvement might be. Can someone from CIAT or FAO please enlighten me?

And while we’re on the subject of introduced mini-livestock, has anything moved the other way? Luigi assures me that grasscutters (aka cane rats, Threonomys spp.) are delicious, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t taste them in Colombia.

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