Multi-award-winning small animal brand HayPigs! caused an April Fools’ stir on social media with news of the launch of a revolutionary new enrichment toy for cavies. 

The company announced it was switching attention from the guinea pig to its big cousin, the capybara! 

The capybara is world’s largest rodent and can reach sizes of 134cm long and 62cm tall, weighing in at an impressive 66kg. 

Chief Designer and co-founder Rik Cridland explains: “We’ve always fancied scaling things up a bit and when the opportunity arose to “think big”, we jumped at the chance! We thought it would be fun to scale up our top selling Cavy Cannonball™ for larger cavies – we didn’t want them missing out!”

The Capy Cannonball, featuring a 6ft long carbon fibre tilting tube, encourages inquisitive capybaras to climb inside the tube and slide out the other end. It can be positioned at the side of a pool or pond and used as a launch platform for swimming.

Rik continues: “Obviously, the frame is no longer plastic (like our original design), this just wasn’t practical given a capybara’s size and weight, so we had a steel frame fabricated instead. From what we’ve seen so far, the capybaras absolutely love the new play tunnel and use it every day! Enrichment is so important for small furries and indeed, bigger ones. Capybaras are intelligent and sociable creatures and are very playful by nature, so we had a feeling it would be a hit!”

The HayPigs! Capy Cannonball retails at £2,999.99 and will be available from June 2023. 

For more information, head over to haypigs.com. Interested stockists can contact HayPigs! via sales@haypigs.com

The social media post did come a disclaimer, revealing it was in fact a hoax.