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I was reading a list of animals that would make bad pets. It said one capybara would be a bad pet because they’re pack animals.
So I would like two capybaras, please.
Today’s Moment of Science… even more rodents of unusual size.
The capybara is an adorable semi-aquatic giant rodent that hails from South and Central America. Resembling a giant guinea pig with a powerful caboose, they can grow to be four feet long and weigh in at about 150lbs. Being highly social critters, they tend to be found in groups of 10-20, but are known to congregate in packs of a hundred or so during the dry season.
Like humans, capybaras cannot synthesize vitamin C, and have been known to develop signs of scurvy in captivity. Unlike most humans (and who am I to judge the outliers), they eat poop to maintain their gut flora. It’s called coprophagia, i.e. the scientific term for “shit eating.” This isn’t uncommon in the animal kingdom, and by ‘in the animal kingdom,’ I mean that Buddy the science dog is a recycler.
Capybara pregnancy lasts 4-5 months, after which the pups are raised communally and will nurse from any mother in the pack. At least with regards to raising pups, female capybaras are pretty ‘kumaya, raise babies, be adorable, eat poop,’ as you do. The males have a dominance hierarchy, and will engage in occasional giant rodent fisticuffs with each other.
They have plenty of natural predators in the forest, like anacondas, ocelots, caimans and, to be fair, humans (stick a pin in that). This is where their semi-aquatic nature makes for a huge evolutionary advantage for this potato of an animal. They’re good little swimmers with partially webbed toes, helping them evade some of their bitier, scratchier predators like jaguars by ducking into the water. They’re even known to sleep in the water, keeping all but their noses submerged.
Living a life aquatic hasn’t always been to the protection of the capybara’s life. In South America, a continent that’s majority Catholic, there are certain times of year when the Church frowns upon eating meat. Well, for some reason they’re fine with fish, but land animals are out. As a lapsed Catholic, I never understood how “only” being allowed fish was a sacrifice, but sure, your popeliness.
Leave it to the Catholics to find a loophole to every self-inflicted wound. Sometime in the 1700s, the Vatican decided, “fuck it, the capybara’s a fish. God called up on the hotline and said it can swim, so, obviously. Oh yeah, ditto the beaver. Pope, out.” Capybara reportedly tastes like pork that tastes like fish, and is very popular during Holy Week in Venezuela.
Another rodent of unusual size, the nutria, has already caused major ecological mischief in the US. So when this waterlogged hamster established itself in Florida and started being spotted across the southern US, it was cause for concern. For now the trajectory of the capybara’s impact on its new ecology is unclear. However, where a new species starts to thrive, often it’s at the expense of another.
Maybe I’ll get two neutered capybaras.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, reminding you not to get invasive species as pets.
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Nutria is what they call the fur of a capybara. I guess nobody wants to call their new fur coat capybara, so they gave it a “nicer” name. They were imported to the U.S. in hopes of establishing fur farming, but when it was decided they weren’t going to make money off them, they just let them go, hence the current problem
The nutria is not a capybara, they’re different species. I wrote an article on them earlier this year.