The organization also notes that pregnancy and birth carry risks for guinea pigs, meaning that breeding should not be treated casually.
That makes the Hatton incident more than just a funny story about an escape.
It demonstrates how a single mistake involving one animal can have consequences for an entire population.
The Curious Case of the Missing Male
The strangest aspect of the story may be how long Randy apparently managed to remain undiscovered.
The park had separate male and female groups, yet one male somehow disappeared from his designated enclosure and appeared inside the female enclosure.
Nobody immediately noticed.
Meanwhile, the female guinea pigs continued with their normal routines.
Only when large numbers of pregnancies began to become apparent did staff realize that a male must have somehow gained access.
That delay explains why the story became so entertaining.
The answer to the mystery was not complicated once Randy was found. But before that discovery, there was no obvious explanation for why so many females were suddenly pregnant.
Randy had essentially become the missing piece of the puzzle.
The Tiny Animal Behind a Very Big Story
Guinea pigs are small animals.
An adult male typically weighs less than a kilogram or a little over a kilogram depending on sex and individual variation, according to the MSD Veterinary Manual.
That makes the scale of Randy's alleged accomplishment particularly striking.
He was not a large or powerful animal.
He was simply a small guinea pig that somehow found a way out of his enclosure.
Yet that tiny escape potentially changed the population of an entire animal park.
His story also demonstrates why animal keepers need to think not only about the animals themselves but about enclosure design, identification, separation and monitoring.
A single animal finding an unexpected route between enclosures can have consequences that are much larger than the escape itself.
From Escapee to Local Celebrity
Once the story became public, Randy's unusual behavior turned him into something of a celebrity.
News organizations across the English-speaking world reported the story in June 2014, including ITV News and UPI.
The reports emphasized the same basic sequence:
The park had around 100 female guinea pigs.
The females were supposed to be separated from the males.
Staff discovered that the females were pregnant.
Then they found Randy, an adult male, inside the female enclosure.
The park estimated that he could have fathered around 400 babies.
And Randy was eventually returned to the male group.
The combination of an unexpected animal escape, a mystery, an enormous predicted baby boom and a perfectly fitting nickname made the story unusually memorable.