Peruvian wild guinea pigs were first described by E. T. Bennett in 1835, who termed them Cavia cutleri. Johann Jakob von Tschudi, in an 1845 publication, used the term Cavia cutleri to refer to what are now considered two separate entities - the first, Bennett's Cavia cutleri, which was later (by Oldfield Thomas in 1917) identified as probably a differently-pigmented version of Cavia porcellus, and the second, a wild Peruvian pig that was clearly different from the animal Bennett described.2 In 18671, Leopold Fitzinger renamed the latter guinea pig Cavia tschudii.2
References
^ ab Fitzinger, Leopold (1867). "Versuch einer natürlichen Anordnung der Nagethiere (Rodentia)". Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Wien (Mathematische-naturwissenschaftliche Classe) 55: 453-515; 56:57-168. Modern references commonly list this incorrectly as 1857.
^ ab Weir, Barbara J. (1974), "Notes on the Origin of the Domestic Guinea-Pig", in Rowlands, I. W.; Weir, Barbara J., The Biology of Hystricomorph Rodents, Academic Press, pp. pp. 437-446, ISBN 0-12-6133334-4
