I've had a lifetime of small animals- starting with mice in childhood. Before our first pair of guinea pigs, I had hedgehogs for 12 years (three different ones over that course of time.) Our final hedgehog, Thistle, had been neglected as a baby and was a far from ideal pet. She really never got comfortable being handled and was a 'look but don't touch' pet. I had my three kids during the 6 years that we had Thistle, and they obviously wanted to interact with her, but she obviously wanted nothing to do with them! Once Thistle died, my husband really did not want another hedgehog and I thought it would be better to have something that the kids could interact with. I've had a lot of rodents of the years (including a guinea pig back in childhood) and my two favorite rodents are guinea pigs and rats. Ultimately I decided to get guinea pigs as they have a longer average lifespan and that was appealing to me, as I think I'm getting to the point of bereavement overload, because when you consider that I'm in my thirties and have owned small pets since I was about nine and have loved them all, I've lost a LOT of pets over the course of twenty years or so, so potential longevity is a selling point for me! I ended up really loving the pigs and have had female pairs of varying pigs for seven or so years now, with plenty more in the future as our youngest piggie is only one and hopefully has a lot more years ahead of her!