by Greg Mayer
You may remember the Looney Tunes cartoon character Sylvester the Cat. One of his recurring story lines was that he mistook a kangaroo for an enormous mouse, which became his nemesis, as his efforts to catch it always ended in humiliating failure. In real life, while there are some big mice, the world’s record rodent is the capybara, a prodigious South American species that resembles a giant guinea pig. The capybara below clearly knows that cats need fusses, and enjoys giving them, but the cat’s face seems torn between discretion and valor in reaction to the amicable rodent.
Capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochairis) are found from Panama to Argentina. (There seems to be some debate over whether the Trans-Andean ones in Panama and northwestern South America should be recognized as a distinct species, isthmius.) They are aquatic, and their major predators include caimans and jaguars (so they’re probably not quite as friendly to all cats).
The biogeographic history of capybaras and their close South American relatives—which include porcupines, guinea pigs and chinchillas—is quite interesting. The group, called caviomorphs, have their nearest relatives in the Old World, a group of rodents that includes the naked mole rats and the Old World porcupines. (New World and Old World porcupines are not that closely related; spiny hair has evolved multiple times in rodents.)
The American and Old World groups together are called hystricognaths. Molecular and fossil data indicate that the New World caviomorphs arrived in South America in the mid-Tertiary (about 40 mya), when South America was an island continent separated from Africa by the Atlantic. Thus the caviomorphs colonized the New World over the ocean via what Darwin called “occasional means of transport” (in this case, probably natural rafts produced by flooding from major rivers). They are thus one of the few mammalian groups that reached South America between the time it broke loose from Gondwanaland until it connected with North America through Panama in the Great American Interchange.
The picture above, which was sent to me, appears to come from a website about capybaras as pets. There’s even a book about cats and capybaras living together, Celeste and the Giant Hamster. (I think they really look more like giant guinea pigs, which are also caviomorphs.)
h/t A. Junker
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Marshall, L.G. 1988. Land mammals and the Great American Interchange. American Scientist 76:380-388. (pdf)
Mones, A. and J. Ojasti. 1986. Hydrochoerus hydrochairis. Mammalian Species 264:1-7. (pdf)
Poux, C., P. Chevret, D. Huchon, W.W. de Jong and E.J.P. Douzery. 2006. Arrival and diversification of caviomorph rodents and platyrrhine primates in South America. Systematic Biology 55:228-244. (pdf)
The Phoenix Zoo has a few capybaras, for those who’d like to see one in person.
I understand they’re actually quite popular in South America as livestock, though….
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I ate a capybara once, in Brazil, at a churrascaria. Well, not a whole one, just a piece. It was delicious.
Better than chicken I hope! 🙂
Monkeys appear to have arrived in the Americas at about the same time, so the Atlantic seems to have been unusually permeable at that moment. Don’t know why.
It would only require one raft to carry both lineages. Maybe they cuddled to keep warm.
Awwwwwww!
The obvious search yields the expected sort of answers (as Jeffrey Shallit points out above). But entry #5 in my search results boggles me : “Capybara Cheesecake Recipe – Food.com – 52412”
“Shome mishtake, shurely?” as the editor of Private Eye is prone to slurring.
Weird – recipe contains tofu, but no capybara, and it’s described as a vegan recipe! I’m almost disappointed, because a capybara cheesecake would raise a real culinary challenge : “For the sophisticated palate.
Hi ho! Back to the pursuit of real horse burgers!
I know that the Catholic Church in Siouth America classifies capybara as fish, but vegan?
Jeffery “The Dude” Lebowski is damn lucky the nihilists who attacked him didn’t know of the capybara. If they’d have dumped an aquatic rodent like the capybara into the bathtub with him — instead of that scrawny little marmot — The Dude might not have been left with enough packaging for the nihilists to threaten to come back to “cut off [his] Johnson” (or “chawnsun,” as the German nihilist put it).
Five thousandth post! Wow, congratulations Jerry! Did you ever imagine it would grow to be so successful when you started?
Owl and dog: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=382177448547735
Would be great to have a few here in Burundi. They just might become ‘the next best thing’ to goats, by way of smallholder livestock investment and meals. Guinea pigs are commonly raised for sale and family eating…
Guinea pigs?! In Burundi, really?! Wow, I never knew that – never saw them in Uganda. Cane rats – a big hystricognath rodent – is a common wild caught food in sub-saharan Africa, and they even do well in urban areas; I have seen them in down town Pretoria late at night. They are delicious.
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Excellent, what a website it is! This web site provides
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Do I get a whiff of spam here?