112 points

Guinea pig bites are the worst.

It’s not the force of the bite, although it does hurt (they bite through wood after all). It’s the humiliation from having one of the most fragile, easy to kill pets decide that it can express its displeasure by biting your hand.

Damn little meat potato. The only reason you can even bite me is because you’re so damn fragile I can’t risk dropping you. Also, the reason I’m holding you is to trim your nails because you don’t wear them down naturally since you live your entire life on padded flannel blankets. Where do you even get off having displeasure to express?

If you weren’t so damn cute, you’d be on the grill.

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43 points

You gotta get the little potato some friends, otherwise they’ll develop mental health issues

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26 points

Naw, the potato has friends. Mental health is still broken.

She’s actually very sweet. She just managed to luck into the discovery that biting gets us to move faster.

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15 points
*

Ah, got it.

Yeah sometimes that is the nature of potato love. They live in a world of absolutes and tremendous dangers; they don’t always have time for calm reflection.

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7 points

they bite through wood after all

trim your nails because you don’t wear them down naturally since you live your entire life on padded flannel blankets

Sounds like you know the problem and ain’t fixing it, chief. Leave some thick sticks with them

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5 points

I’m not sure how you reached the conclusion that they don’t have wood to gnaw on. They do.

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5 points

I’ve had a guinea pig and he never bit me. Not once. Only licked. He trusted me and I made sure he had a good life. He was outside and free to roam the garden until dusk. And inside the home if the outside was too cold/dark/wet. The garden also offered lots of plants to eat and hide under. He had great avriety in diet alongside the petfood and guineapig essentials. He would join me at the dinner table with his own plate of safe greens. We would snuggle every day. Everytime I had to catch him, it sometimes turned into a chase. He ofcourse didn’t want to go into the cage. The cage only served to protect him against predators at night, and from our electronic cables. Which ofcourse he didn’t understand. But he still accepted me picking him up when catching him. No biting. He knew he’d be free again come morning. He died how he lived after my dad let him out and left him outside overnight because he couldn’t catch him. My only regret is that I didn’t know they had to come in pairs.

So what in the fuck are you doing with that guinea pig that it distrusts you so? I literally had to chase him sometimes and he still didn’t bite me when I gently but quickly scooped him.

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8 points

Just one?

Well, if you had more than one, you’d find that they are all different, with different personalities, and you wouldn’t be so quick to assume you know all guinea pigs because of your experience with your sole pig.

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3 points

Pigs have complex personalities and every one is different

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3 points

on the grill

Yum

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3 points

They are made of food

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97 points

Crazy parrot and reptile lady here to confirm. I would much rather take a bite from a large snake any day of the week than take a bite from one of my birds. I’ve had to get stitches multiple times because of my little feathered assholes.

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21 points

I have been bit by a conure more times than I can count, I have been bit and constricted by a python once. Getting bit by an actual parrot is a big reason why I haven’t gotten into larger birds.

I would rather be bit by the Amazonian Hitler pigeon. Python teeth are like Velcro for skin and it is horrible.

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20 points

The key to dealing with a (pet) snake bite is to not pull back in fear. Their teeth are definitely like Velcro. Usually I’d just let them go to town and then run some hot tap water over their head. They don’t like the water and immediately let go. With birds you’re getting hurt no matter what you do.

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15 points

I don’t remember the exact circumstances, I think I was going to give her a quick bath before a flight(mistake). I was holding her when she bit the meat of my thumb and coiled around my hand and wrist. All 5 feet of her was coiled with her head in the middle of the ball. Water did nothing. I had to wait about a half hour before she got bored, she then peeled her mouth off. I later found out that rubbing alcohol gets them to fuck off immediately, but that was the first and last time she bit me.

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3 points

my goffin encounters have been more than enough for me.

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2 points

The Amazonian what now?

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2 points

If you had a conure, it makes sense.

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16 points
*

This is scary new information for me that puts a childhood incident in a much more horrifying context. I was at pet store when I was like 10 and one of the parrots seemed friendly so I let it climb up to my shoulder, only for it to painfully bite my ear. It hurt a lot, but no blood was drawn. I managed to get free easily enough. I thought that was pretty bad, but now I’m learning that apparently it could’ve easily ripped off my ear?!? Apparently I’m a lot luckier and that parrot was actually a lot nicer than I thought.

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6 points

My African Grey could easily cause me serious damage but he does hold back by only giving me warning bites. He thinks he’s being gentle but it still hurts and I don’t ever forget what they are capable of.

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6 points

Do they get reported when you get bit? I’ve heard in some places even if it’s your animal you have to report them for biting you

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6 points

No not where I live. When my husband and I kept hot inverts along with our snakes I kept a comprehensive supplemental insurance just in case someone got hurt, but the laws here only apply for reporting illegal animals.

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3 points
*

I’ve had a lot of reptiles and as a result, a lot of reptile bites.

Almost every time I’ve been bit it was an accident or a response, and as soon as the reptile realized it had human skin in it’s mouth it would release. Even herbivore iguanas have a lot of pretty sharp teeth and I’ve had some unique looking bite marks, but they almost never bite intentionally.

Parrots meanwhile… they are evil incarnate, at least to me. I’ve never met a parrot that didn’t bite me hard enough to let me know it could easily amputate parts of my body if it so chose. Meanwhile I see them loving and cuddling other people, people who say things like “He’s really very loving, he never bites anyone, he’s perfectly safe to pet!”

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64 points

PSI… in science memes? 🤮

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27 points

Newton pet meter squared

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-18 points

Most people understand psi, not newtons. You should know better lol

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16 points

The rest of the world would like a word. Do you really think only you people in the US exist?

Also the equivalent for psi is Pa (=N/m²), usually as kPa or bar (100 kPa).

Most people don’t really understand either to a great extent, and are just familiar with one or the other.

As always though, metric wins because of its interoperability with all the other metric units.

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6 points

“Most people”, no, the earth isn’t mostly Americans. It’s only Americans that do this dumb as fuck things where they forget the rest of the world and think only they exist or matter. You have no idea how fucking annoying it is, and how much it shows stupidity and ignorance.

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47 points

Their primary method of interacting with the world is with a switchblade mounted on their face.

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36 points

I’m almost afraid to ask… How much?

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84 points

The average Green Winged Macaw can generate around 400 PSI in one bite – that’s much stronger than the average human bite!

Moluccan Cockatoo: It’s bite force suprasses even that of the Macaw, weighing in at over 500 PSI.

https://www.parrotwebsite.com/which-parrot-has-the-worst-bite/

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33 points

Because my brain is fundamentally incompatible with imperial measurements:

500psi is equivalent to about 35kg of weight stacked into a centimetre square (so 35bar / 3500kpa)

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14 points

Bothered by the units but not the lack of factoring for size differences? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite_force_quotient

It would seem the unit you want for the SI biting force quotient is the Newton per kilogram.

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Certainly a big number

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8 points

As far as numbers go, it’s definitely a number.

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4 points

I thought it had to be either a big number, or a small number. So, yeah.

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3 points

How much is a human bite?

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3 points

162 psi. More than a cat, less than a big dog.

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12 points

They crack nuts with their beaks, we had to invent a tool for that job.

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