 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 guinea pig that was clearly different from the animal Bennett described.In 1867, Leopold Fitzinger renamed the latter guinea pig "Cavia tschudii".