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.
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It’s the best type of fish ever…
Not my pic, but this is in my city, Curitiba:
I used to visit that specific park (Parque Barigüi) fairly often, as I worked nearby. For me the fun part wasn’t even interacting with the capybaras, but watching tourists interacting with them. Not recommended - unlike the ones in the OP, these here are wild and might have ticks, but… well, neither tourists nor capybaras give a fuck.
Just make sure that you don’t go full “squeee” and chase them, they’ll simply get into the water and you’ll be sad. A girl whom I used to date did this.
I would risk a tick to hug a capybara
It’s actually quite risky. Some people died last month in Brazil because of the disease that’s is transmitted by these ticks (Rocky Mountain spotted fever if I got it right from google, febre maculosa in Portuguese).
I remember news about that. It was in Campinas - there was a huge capybara population boom.
That city is in a specially bad spot for this sort of disease because it’s heavily populated like Curitiba, but unlike Curitiba it has a huge rural area. Like, you walk in Barão Geraldo neighbourhood and it’s booming, then you walk a bit more and suddenly you’re in the middle of nowhere. The odds of infecting livestock that infects people are fairly high, and with the demographic density in Campinas proper you get it from person to person.
Still better to do what the OP did though. If you want to hug the oversized rodents, make sure that there’s people taking care of them, and ensuring that they’re OK.
Yep, that’s the one, I think there were even more cases like last week or something.
Still better to do what the OP did though. If you want to hug the oversized rodents, make sure that there’s people taking care of them, and ensuring that they’re OK.
Yeah, 100%. Being taken care they seem to be super chill and safe to interact with.
Speak’s brethren!
Vet: “Capybara Tick! Speak’s not a dog. He’s a rodent!”
The Tick: “Ooh!”
Vet: “But he’s one of the world’s largest.”
Tick: “Oh, man! Way to go, Speak!”
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.
