Chinchillas

You have decided to get a pet, and your difficult choice has settled on a chinchilla. Let us tell you in more detail about this amazing and, for us, exotic little animal. In the wild it is a little-studied animal, and the main observations of it were carried out in captivity. The natural habitat for chinchillas is the territory of South America, more precisely such countries as Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. They live in voids and crevices between rocks high in the mountains. The chinchilla is a nocturnal animal, and they settle in colonies. There are only two species of chinchilla: the large or short-tailed chinchilla, and the coastal or small long-tailed chinchilla. Because they settle in the mountains where it is constantly cold, nature endowed them with warm and very dense fur. Surprisingly, due to the very high density of the fur, the parasites usually found on other animals cannot live in it. And it is precisely because of their unique fur that they became an object of hunting, which led to a catastrophic decrease in their population, and at present chinchillas are listed in the International Red Book.

Before buying yourself this fluffy friend, it is worth pausing to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of keeping chinchillas at home. As pets in North America they began to be kept a very long time ago, while here people became interested in chinchillas in the early nineties.