Colours of Wildlife: Capybaras
Created | Updated Dec 21, 2014
Capybaras
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
Here you see a group of Capybaras! The Capybara, Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, is the world's largest surviving rodent species. The scientific name means 'river pig river pig' (rodents not being at all close relatives of pigs, though). The common name comes from the Tupi language and roughly means 'grass eater'. Capybaras are found in the wild in the warmer, wetter parts of South America east of the Andes Mountains. They reach a snout-to-butt (they're practically tailless) length of 1.35m/4'6" and a shoulder height of 65 cm/25". They can weigh up to 91 kg/200 lbs. Actually the heaviest individual was a female; the heaviest male was recorded at 73.5 kg/162 lbs. More typically, they weigh from 35 to 66 kg/77 to 146 lbs. This article is about the main capybara; there is also a second species, the lesser capybara found more to the northwest.
Rodent Hippos
Capybaras can be seen as the rodent versions of hippos. They spend much of their time in the water. Though not quite to the extreme degree seen in hippos, they nevertheless have eyes, ears and nostrils set high so that they can see what's happening around them with most of their bodies submerged, just the tops of their heads protruding. While hippos have naked skins, capybaras are clad in coarse, sparse hairs that dry out very rapidly once they leave the water. Capybara feet have rather rubbery-looking toes and are slightly webbed. They can remain submerged for five minutes or so. They can even sleep in the water, being able to breathe freely so long as their nostrils are poking out above the surface. They often wallow in mud. Also like hippos, they are surprisingly agile on land, being able to run fast. Wikipedia says they can run as fast as a horse … I'm not so sure about that. Maybe if it's a rather slow horse. Still, for their size, that's pretty fast!
Like hippos, capybaras are primarily grass eaters, grazing on the lush growth on the verges of rivers, lakes, marshes and swamps. They also eat plants growing in the water. Like other rodents, they have large front teeth with which they occasionally gnaw on the bark of trees, like beavers. They'll also eat fruit if it is available. Much of their range experiences seasonal differences in water flow, heavy summer rains leading to rivers flooding the surrounding forest and grassland, while the dry winter causes a retreat and drying up of rivers, marshes and ponds. During the dry season, they might eat mainly reed stems. They eat mostly during the mornings, afternoons and evenings. They spend the warmest part of the day wading or swimming, and rest and sleep around midnight.
Like rabbits, hares and Pikas (which are not rodents but lagomorphs), capybaras eat their own droppings, to extract maximal nutrition from them. Furthermore, capybaras will also regurgitate half-digested wads of food and chew them prior to swallowing them again, like cud-chewing hoofed mammals. They chew so much that not only their front teeth, but also their cheek teeth, have to keep growing throughout their lives to keep from being worn down to stubs. All in all, these strategies help capybaras to make very efficient use of their food resources.
Like hippos, capybaras are also quite social, found in groups of up to 100 individuals. They occur in the largest concentrations during the dry season, when they come together at the remaining ponds and stretches of river as the rest of their habitat dries out. They have a hierarchical social system, with dominant males calling the shots. They are in fact quite vocal, using chattering calls and barks to communicate with each other. Like most land mammals, they also use scents to communicate, having scent glands on their snouts as well as their butts. The butt-glands of the males actually have hairs that can detach; they rub these off on surrounding vegetation to fix their scents there. Males, but not females, also scent-mark by urinating on specific spots.
The female's scent changes when she's in estrus, thus signalling to the male that she's receptive. To make sure he takes the hint, she also whistles at him through her nose. Being generally bigger than the males, the female is choosy as to whom she allows to mate with her. In large herds, some of the subordinate males will sometimes manage to sneak in a few matings with desirable females under the nose of the dominant male, so to speak. They mate in the water. The female gives birth to a litter of anywhere from one to eight babies, but mostly four. The babies are open-eyed and can move around on their own soon after birth. After a week, they can already eat grass, but continue to suckle from their mom for about sixteen weeks. In capybara herds, adults other than the actual parents will watch over and take care of the young. Capybaras can reach the age of twelve years.
Capybaras are still abundant in the wild. They are preyed on by jaguars, pumas, caimans and crocodiles, anacondas and large eagles. They are also hunted by humans and sometimes farmed for their meat and hides. They're the victim of an unfortunate technicality in the law of the Roman Catholic church. Catholics are forbidden from eating meat during Lent, but are allowed to eat fish. Capybaras, being aquatic, got classified as fish, and so folks were allowed to eat it during that time! The Church doesn't seem to have much truck with scientific systems of classification …
Giant Guinea Pigs
Actually, capybaras are quite closely related to guinea pigs! This makes some sense of the fact that they are rather easy to tame and make, so it is said, delightful pets. Still, they need fairly special care. They sometimes escape captivity, and feral ones have been spotted in the wilds of Florida and California. Apart from guinea pigs, capybaras are also related to a group of small, mountain-living, guinea-pig-like rodents called rock cavies. All of these are found in South America. Rather more distantly, capybaras are related to other South American rodents such as chinchillas, agoutis and coypus. South America is characterized by a great profusion of unique rodents, perhaps having more rodent diversity than any other continent. This group of South American rodents might be somewhat distant relatives of the African and Asian porcupines as well as groups such as the cane rats and Dassie rat..
While the capybara is the largest rodent living today, there used to be rodents even bigger! All of these were from the new world. Josephoartigasia was perhaps the largest of all. With a skull as large as a cow's, it probably was of comparable size, reaching perhaps a ton in bodyweight! Other vast, extinct rodents include Phoberomys and Telicomys. These were not very close relatives of capybaras, but actually close to the living Pacarana, another stout South American rodent. There were also extinct capybaras, in the genus Neochoerus, that were not quite as big as the above three, but still bigger than the living capybara. These occurred in the southern USA as recently as eleven thousand years ago. Lastly, there used to be gigantic beavers in North America as well as Europe and Asia, some of which reached the size of a black bear.
