What do capybaras

Please join our alliance to keep forests standing:. Yes, I agree to receive occasional emails from the Rainforest Alliance. Diet They are herbivores and eat the vegetation that lines water sources and other aquatic plants. Close up of a Capybara Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris and two babies in a lake.

Threats Capybaras are naturally threatened by jaguars, caimans and anacondas, and their young can be taken by ocelots and harpy eagles. Did You Know When threatened, capybaras will jump into the water and hide beneath the surface. Sources Jukofsky, Diane. Encyclopedia of Rainforests. Tags: Environmental Curriculum for Schools. You Might Also Like Species Profile African Elephant. Species Profile Black Howler Monkey. Species Profile Amazon River Dolphin. Species Profile Ocelot.

For Business Transform your business practices. For Supporters Help us rebalance the planet. The capybara has something in common with the hippo: its eyes, ears, and nostrils are all found near the top of the its head. A capybara can lift just those parts out of the water to learn everything it needs to know about its surroundings while the rest of its body remains hidden underwater. Capybaras also wallow in shallow water and mud to keep cool during a hot day before wandering out in the evening to graze.

They tend to eat around dawn and dusk, but if capybaras feel threatened, they wait until the safe cover of night to eat. Feeling right at home. Capybara live in Central and South America. They roam the swampy, grassy regions bordering rivers, ponds, streams.

Long in the teeth. Because capybaras are rodents, they share some common features with mice, squirrels, and porcupines. The most well-known of those features are probably those ever-growing front teeth. Capybaras use their long, sharp teeth for grazing on grass and water plants. An adult capy can eat 6 to 8 pounds 2. During the dry season, when fresh grasses and water plants dry up, capybaras eat reeds, grains, melons, and squashes.

They also eat their own poop to get beneficial bacteria to help their stomach break down the thick fiber in their meals. They chew their food from side to side, like a camel, rather than up and down, like we do.

This is a good way to eat tough plant materials. This thing's like going viral. It's kind of hilarious. What's been really interesting is not only the interest, but the different aspects of interest. I've had to be very, very careful. As you can see, I kind of joke around a lot when I talk and I've had to be very careful because, boy, it's always the misquote that'll get you. The original talk that I gave, it was actually a kind of a tongue-in-cheek comment I made at the end about not killing them so that I could study them, and I had invasive species biologists calling me and saying, "How could you say that?

How could you say to not eradicate invasive species? I didn't say that. They're not invasive and that was a joke in a room full of animal behaviorists who all know me personally. This kind of research gets ahead of a problem Okay, yes, this isn't a problem yet, but maybe we can prevent a future problem by studying these things. What do you think eats the capybaras in Florida?

Are they going to be eaten by the pythons, the crocs, or the Florida panthers? Because they're in north Central Florida, and not down in the Everglades, their biggest predator here would be the alligators. I do find it interesting that there haven't been a lot of sightings in Southern Florida, because I think, "Well yeah, if they go down there, then the pythons are going to get them. But in Venezuela, I have seen an adult female back down a full size caiman that was going after her baby.

The young, the babies, they're a snack for anything because they're babies, but the thing about capybaras is, they can have up to as many as eight young at a time. Oh, they're dumb. They're dumb as a box of rocks. I mean, they're a big rodent, they're not smart. I think of them kind of like cows, in terms of their personality.

Like, "Give me a patch of grass, let me eat, leave me alone, I'm good. See, their hair is coarse. Not as coarse as a pig, but kind of in that direction, so they're not cuddly like a dog or anything, so the allure of having them as a pet is really in their oddity.

They can get up to a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty pounds, and because they're territorial, they're not trying to run away. They'll just poke around the yard, and I suppose it keeps your grass under control, you don't have to mow as much.

I don't know what the laws are in California, but please don't. Please don't. For one thing, they're going to poop all over your yard, and you're going to have to have a kiddy pool for it, and they're going to pee in that kiddy pool, and it's going to be disgusting, and after a couple years, you're going to be tired of it, but it's still going to be alive, and then what are you going to do with it? We're actually within the temperature and rainfall range of what they like; they just didn't happen to be here because they didn't happen to come up the Central American isthmus there, and once the Panama Canal was there, they didn't cross over.

Really, in terms of habitat, we're just right for them, and what we don't have, particularly any more — you know, we don't have the jaguars any more, and we really don't have very many big cats at all. Because they only eat grass, the only thing that they would be really a threat is if they get near agricultural crops, as we've seen in Brazil.

They have been seen in Brazil to carry ticks, that can then carry disease. And so one of the things that one of the University of Florida professors — her name is Samantha Wisely — she studies zoonotic diseases, so diseases that are carried by animals and that can be transferred potentially to people. She's going to be looking for ticks that would be carried by the capybaras and potentially spread by the capybaras that could be a threat to people.

Yes, it's called coprophagy, and they do. It's thought to be a mechanism to get all the nutrients; animals can't digest grass very well, so to get all the nutrients out of it, they basically eat it twice. Yeah, they do, they eat their own poop. Still want one as a pet? The whole dream is gone. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week.

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