First off, chinchillas are rodents. Don’t worry, being a rodent doesn’t make them “icky”. Being a rodent just means that they are mammals with front teeth that never stop growing. We all know that mice and rats are rodents, but so are squirrels, prairie dogs, and beavers.
Chinchillas come from the Andes mountains in South America. In the wild they live in herds and can be found grazing on grass, leaves, and seeds found on the harsh, dry mountains.
Despite being from the mountains, they are awful climbers. They have spindly little front legs and tiny little hands that are great for looking cute while they are grabbing food, but are nearly useless for climbing. Their back legs are strong and built for jumping, like a rabbit. These back legs allow them to jump and hop from rock to rock. Jumping is much faster than climbing and allows them to escape predators like hawks and snakes more easily. This means that in peoples’ homes, like mine for instance, they prefer vertical cages so that they can jump from shelf to shelf inside the cage. We stagger the shelves as ledges that they can hop between them, to simulate hopping up on to rocks.
To survive the harsh cold of the Andes, chinchillas have incredibly dense fur coats. For most people these coats are the most appealing part of chinchillas. They are unbelievably soft. I mean really soft. Soft like a cloud mixed with the downy feathers of a baby angel. Unfortunately for the chinchillas, they aren’t the only ones who would like to wear a luxuriously soft fur coat. Chinchillas were hunted to near extinction so that people could make clothing from their fur. After all, chinchillas aren’t very big so it takes a lot of them to make a nice full-length jacket. Then a few extra if you want a matching hat. Now, however, the wild chinchillas are protected but there are still chinchilla farms that raise the animals just for fur production.
On the bright side, their fur helps make them excellent pets for people that may not be able to have dogs or cats. Since their fur is hypoallergenic most people with allergies are not allergic to chinchillas. Also, the hairs are so dense that there is literally no room for fleas.
In fact, their fur is too dense to properly dry if it gets wet. This means that they don’t bathe in water. Chinchillas have discovered that rolling around in pumice sand will clean their fur. The dirt and oils in their fur will stick to the pumice and fall off after the ‘bath’, leaving them nice and clean. In the wild they will find this pumice left over from past volcanic eruptions. As pet owners we buy it at pet stores and put it in covered houses for them to roll around in. And trust me, it needs to be in a covered container. They LOVE to roll around in the dust and have an amazing ability to fling that stuff for miles.
The only thing cuter than a chinchilla is a baby one. Once chinchillas have mated, the female is pregnant for about 111 days. This is long for a rodent, but is necessary for chinchillas because the babies are born fully covered in fur with their eyes open, ready to survive on the mountain from the day they are born. Pet chinchillas typically live for 10 – 15 years.
The only downside to a pet chinchilla is their poop. While it is expected that every pet will poop, the chinchillas do it constantly. They will pee in a litter box, but expect to find their poop everywhere that they pass.
In the end though, continuous pooping aside, chinchillas are great animals and make wonderful pets. They are soft, gentle, and endlessly entertaining.
