It was awesome! One even rolled over on its side to get belly rubs. Definitely would recommend for any animal lovers. :)
https://www.gatorland.com/animals/meet-a-capybara/
Link for anyone interested.
It was awesome! One even rolled over on its side to get belly rubs. Definitely would recommend for any animal lovers. :)
https://www.gatorland.com/animals/meet-a-capybara/
Link for anyone interested.
Adorable! I’d love a domesticated one. I’d imagine they give great cuddles
Too bad domestication takes generations. 😭 My buddy loves capybaras so much he has a tattoo of one.
Do you know if people have made a start?
Nope, but after researching everything you’d need to do to provide a suitable environment for a capybara, it seems super unfeasible. Besides breeding a desire for human companionship into capybaras, they require huge enclosures and access to large bodies of water since they’re semi aquatic. Furthermore, the water would need to be thermally regulated and regularly filtered because that’s where they defecate and stuff.
You can alter a creature’s biology and behavior with domestication to an extent, but it seems like you’d have to be filthy rich or overhaul what a capybara is just to make having one as a pet a humane option.
They’ll just have to keep being our buddies in the wild (or in dedicated sanctuaries).
The biggest issue is poop. They don’t poop just in the water, they poop everywhere. And they often eat their own poop, not just under stress conditions (as dogs do) but even when they’re happy. I’m not sure if they can be conditioned, for example, to only poop in a litterbox, and to leave the poop alone.
On the other hand, thermal regulation for the water isn’t that big of a deal, they’re more resilient to cold than it looks like:
I think that this pic is from the same park as I posted early on. It snows once in a blue moon here, but hail is somewhat common in the winter. They handle it fine.