Capybara

The capybara is a rodent the size of a large dog, and one of the most relaxed animals on Earth. It grazes riverbanks and marshes across South America, lives in easygoing herds, and has become famous online for sitting calmly while birds, monkeys, and even other predators pile on top of it.

Overview

Capybaras never stray far from water. They live along the edges of rivers, ponds, marshes, and seasonally flooded grasslands from Panama to Argentina, and their day revolves around the water: grazing on the bank in the cool of morning and evening, wallowing to keep cool through midday heat, and escaping into the water at any sign of danger.

Physical characteristics

A capybara is built like a giant guinea pig — a heavy, rounded body, a large blunt head, short legs, no visible tail, and coarse reddish-brown fur. The feet are partly webbed for swimming and spread the animal’s weight on soft mud. The eyes, ears, and nostrils are set high on the skull so the capybara can breathe, see, and hear while almost completely underwater.

Like all rodents, its front teeth never stop growing; the constant grinding of tough grass keeps them in check.

Diet

Capybaras are grazers, eating mostly grasses and aquatic plants, plus fruit and tree bark in the dry season. Grass is hard to digest, so they practise coprophagy — eating their own soft morning faeces to pass the food through a second time and recover nutrients and gut bacteria, much as rabbits do.

Social life

Capybaras live in stable herds, typically of ten to twenty animals: a dominant male, several females, their young, and one or more subordinate males. In the dry season, when water shrinks to a few pools, herds may merge into aggregations of a hundred or more. They communicate constantly with purrs, barks, whistles, and clicks, and the dominant male marks the group’s range with a scent gland on his snout called the morrillo.

Reproduction

Breeding happens year-round where conditions allow, peaking with the rains. After a five-month pregnancy a female gives birth on land to two to eight precocial pups — fully furred, eyes open, able to walk and eat grass within days. The whole herd helps watch over the young, and females will nurse each other’s pups.

Threats and conservation

The capybara is listed as Least Concern and remains common. It is hunted for meat and hide across much of its range — in some Catholic regions it is traditionally eaten during Lent, having once been classified as “fish” — and it is farmed commercially in Venezuela and elsewhere. Where cattle ranching has cleared forest and added water points, capybara numbers have actually risen, and in parts of Argentina and Brazil they are now managed as an agricultural pest. The main natural checks on the population are predators — jaguars, pumas, caimans, anacondas, and, for the young, ocelots and birds of prey.