A great way to bond with a guinea pig is eye to eye. It has been pointed out that guinea pigs have very poor eye sight. They certainly lack depth perception! A great way to bond with a guinea pig is to get flat on the same surface. Give your GP some nibbles of food and, after, put your face close.
Hi
Please be aware that guinea pigs are prey animals. Direct eye contact is very threatening to them and they are highly likely to switch straight into their 'uninteresting predator toy' mode. Their apparent docility is only seeming; underneath it they are actually highly stressed out. An uninteresting predator's 'play toy' will have a much greater chance of survival if the predator loses interest quickly... What humans usually consider endearing is actually a survival mechanism for guinea pigs.
Full-on eye contact is a predatory/hunting instinct; humans work totally different to guinea pigs in this respect - our frontal eyes with depth perception make it very clear to which category we belong.
With guinea pigs you best interact facing sideways (respecting how guinea pig eyes are set) and just out of the corner of your eye. It is much more effective in creating an unthreatening atmosphere, believe me! You also want to give a new guinea pig space and not push them too much. Trust is a plant that needs to make deep roots first before it can grow and blossom.
What you are proposing here can unfortunately go very easily very wrong with a piggy already on edge going for a full-on sudden trigger defence bite. These bites can permanently cripple our hands but I'd rather not risk it with my face nor would I care to put other less experienced owners in a situation like that when they are not able yet to read the very subtle warning signs.
Guinea pigs have sharp eyesight for a much shorter distance than humans - they have evolved mainly in dense undergrowth (which is why they love a covering that gives them that instant feeling of protection and why covering the cage with a sheet is a very good way of letting them settle in). After about 1-2 feet they switch to detecting fast motion (i.e. reacting to potential predator attacks).
That is the reason why you should always avoid any fast movements and ideally any predatory behaviours at first and especially with timid new arrivals that can in some cases take months or even years to settle down, whatever the tricks.
You have to consider the impact of far sight every bit as much as near sight, be aware of how their prey animal instincts work and also take into account their other senses, which are all much stronger than eyesight (and therefore stronger than the correlating human sense since eyesight is our strongest human sense), but you have to work first and foremost from the perspective of a small prey animal and not being stuck in a human-based approach based on your own instinctive and therefore rarely questioned behaviours. As a species, we have fallen short on this aspect all the time and still do it all too often, even with the best intentions.
It is something you can only learn over time and continue working on the more you get into guinea pigs; something you will never stop learning. But firstly, you need to get away from the human taming perspective and rather try to wrap your head around how you yourself come across to your piggies at all times. You also need to question yourself all the time whether what you are doing is rooted in your human instincts and unreflected social expectations or not. It is admittedly quite a challenge to do this very consequently, but ultimately a more fruitful approach for the long term.
You can learn more about how prey animal instincts work in guinea pigs in this link here:
Understanding Prey Animal Instincts, Guinea Pig Whispering and Cuddling Tips
Learn more about eyesight in guinea pigs:
Guinea Pig Facts - An Overview
You are welcome to ask any questions or post about aspects of interest for a constructive discussion on here but please be careful about posting any discoveries of yours in the form handing out advice to others, especially when you cannot back up your premises properly and they do not hold up to closer scrutiny. We are mainly UK based in terms of members; there is a cultural difference in how you present yourself.
You have good instincts but you are only still rather at the start of a very fascinating life-long journey.
May I please ask how long you have had guinea pigs for and how many you have/have had?
We are not a free for all social media group but a moderated forum outside social media, so we have a different style and culture on here to what you are likely used to.
