The eye of Caplin Rous

The above photo is probably the most famous photo of any capybara’s eye, mainly because there are not really any famous photos of capybara eyes. I’d like to change that. Clearly, Caplin Rous had the prettiest eyes ever but all capybaras have lovely, [...]]]>

The eye of Caplin Rous

The above photo is probably the most famous photo of any capybara’s eye, mainly because there are not really any famous photos of capybara eyes. I’d like to change that. Clearly, Caplin Rous had the prettiest eyes ever but all capybaras have lovely, cool, interesting eyes.

My eyes do not protrude

I started thinking about eyes after watching that Wild Venezuela: The Capybara video. I got upset when they said we capybaras have “protruding eyes.” That is just not true! You can see in the photo above that my eyes do not protrude. Do I look like a frog to you? I don’t think so.

But there’s more that’s great about our eyes than just that they don’t protrude. Our eyes are not just beautiful, they are also specially adapted for our life in the open flood plains of South America.

1/3 closed (rear)

It’s bright out in the llanos and a capybara can’t usually find any decent shade. So our eyes have adapted to close in thirds. We can close just the back third as Caplin Rous is doing in the above photo.

Front 1/3 closed

Or we can close just the front 1/3. Okay, I admit that in the photo above I am kind of squinting in the back but you can still see how different my eye looks in this photo than Caplin’s eye looks in the previous photo.

1/3 open, 2/3rds closed

In the photo above I am underwater but you can see that both the front and the back thirds of my eye are closed with only the middle third open. I’ll bet you can’t do that. (Unless you are a capybara, in which case I am not betting.)

Completely closed

I go into a kind of trance when Bakersfield is around, as you can see from the photo above. That little rat makes me so happy. My fur puffs up all over and I roll onto my side and close my eyes. You can see that when my eyes are completely closed, they just look like a long, black line.

If you look back at the photos, you might also notice that we have wonderfully long, dark lashes. But did you see that they are only on the middle third of our eye?

Every part of a capybara is cute but I think maybe our eyes are our cutest feature.

Owner’s blog:

Garibaldi Rous is going to the vet tomorrow and the photo above shows why I made the appointment.

**** This post contains images that may disturb some people, please do not continue if you suspect you are one of those.*****

I am not [...]]]>

Garibaldi's lump on June 24th

Owner’s blog:

Garibaldi Rous is going to the vet tomorrow and the photo above shows why I made the appointment.

**** This post contains images that may disturb some people, please do not continue if you suspect you are one of those.*****

I am not sure when Garibaldi first developed this bump high on his left side but I know it’s been there a long time. Possibly he had it when we got him five months ago. When I took him to Texas A&M for his well-capybara checkup, he had the lump but it was very small. I wouldn’t have even called it a lump back then, it was just a rough spot on his skin. I was going to show it to Dr. Hoppes but when I probed his side with my fingers, I couldn’t find it. Well, I thought, it’s probably nothing anyway.

On June 24th I decided that the lump was looking much bigger and nastier and a vet visit was clearly called for.

Getting all the way up to A&M in College Station with Garibaldi is not trivial. Firstly, I have to rent a van, which is startlingly expensive. If Gari were Caplin, he could just go in my car, but Gari is not Caplin and he gets scared and nervous. Plus we have to bring his gigantic crate in case we need a reliable transport mechanism since he is still not good on a leash. And I need at least one person to travel with us. Someone has to drive and someone has to take care of Gari. And that person and I both have to have a day off from work. On top of all that, Dr. Hoppes has to be available to see him. Given all that, it’s pretty amazing that we got an appointment for July 1st.

Garibaldi's lump on June 28th

As if it knew it’s time was limited, the lump started looking worse almost immediately. By June 28th it was much larger and redder. And it had a suspicious hard spot at one end. You can see that in the photo above. It looks almost like a whole in his skin with something sticking out of it. That made me think of bot flies.

Bot flies are flies whose larva live under the skin of various warm blooded animals. The made a sore with a breathing hole in it. I have never seen one that looked quite like this but there are a lot of species of bot flies. Also, capybara skin is different from the skin of any other mammal in that it is very tightly bonded to the layer of connective tissue underneath. That might cause a bot fly larva some trouble.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bot fly larval removal from a dog

Garibaldi's lump on June 30th

Today the lump looked even worse and now it seems to be exuding puss. I don’t think a bot fly would do that unless maybe it had died and the whole thing had become infected.

The lump on June 30th

Another look at the lump on June 30th

All I can say is that it looks bad and I am so glad Gari will be at the vet’s tomorrow to take care of it.

Garibaldi from behind

Gari has another, more sensitive, issue that we are hopefully going to take care of tomorrow. Look at his legs in the photo above. You can see that his hocks (that’s what they would be called on a horse, not sure about a capybara) are hitting each other. For some reason, Gari is too narrow through the hips. This may be due to his living mostly indoors until he was ten months old, or it may not.

Garibaldi from the rear

Another symptom of his narrow hind end is that his testicles really don’t fit back there. They are more prominent on him than on a typical capybara and there just doesn’t seem to be enough room for both of them. At any rate, he is marking up the carpet at a prodigious rate and that is going to have to stop one way or another. I don’t think Gari would be happy as an outdoor capybara so tomorrow he is going to get neutered.

Wish us luck and a speedy recovery to little Garibara! Tomorrow will be a hard day for him.

Caplin & Garibaldi Weights

The above image captures the growth charts for Caplin Rous (red) from birth until he reached his adult weight and Garibaldi Rous (blue) from 10-14 months of age. It looks like Garibaldi is slowly closing the weight gap. As you can see, Caplin’s chart is entering a [...]]]> Owner’s blog:

Caplin & Garibaldi Weights

The above image captures the growth charts for Caplin Rous (red) from birth until he reached his adult weight and Garibaldi Rous (blue) from 10-14 months of age. It looks like Garibaldi is slowly closing the weight gap. As you can see, Caplin’s chart is entering a slow growth phase as he reaches adult weight. It will be interesting to see if Garibaldi’s weight also slows down. There are three possibilities. The first is that Gari will continue rapid growth until his line intersects Caplin’s. The second is that Gari’s growth will slow just as Caplin’s did and he will end up being a smaller capybara. The third is that Gari’s growth may slow but continue at the slower pace for a longer time; Caplin’s adult weight always hovered between 100 and 110 lbs. (Don’t forget that you can click on the image to see a larger version.)

I will post an updated chart in another couple of months.

Yesterday was a scary day for me and Melly. And for Coral, Sheldon and Elizabeth too. We were all scared and I was the one doing the scaring.

Here’s what happened. Round about 4:30 pm, Melly came looking for me. I was sitting on the threshold of the back [...]]]>

Me and my crate

Yesterday was a scary day for me and Melly. And for Coral, Sheldon and Elizabeth too. We were all scared and I was the one doing the scaring.

Here’s what happened. Round about 4:30 pm, Melly came looking for me. I was sitting on the threshold of the back door, one of my favorite places. But I wasn’t right. There was something terribly, terribly wrong with me. I was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane and I looked like someone had poured a bucket of water over me that only got the ridge of my back wet and I was drooling a clear viscous liquid like a rabid rodent who was only drooling and not frothing. And I was breathing very quickly and very shallowly.

Melly panicked! After what happened to Caplin Rous, she’s a bit paranoid when it comes to capybara health. She immediately decided that I needed to go to the vet. She didn’t want to take me all the way to the A&M vet school though because she knew the exotic animal vet (who is helping us set up the ROUS Foundation), was on vacation. So she decided I could go to the local exotic animal vet. While she was figuring that out, she called Sheldon but he didn’t answer his phone. Then she called Elizabeth who said she would be right over. Then she called the vet who said I had to get there within the hour. PANIC!

I know I’ve been living with Melly and Rick for quite a while now (Rick was in Houston in case you were wondering), but I still am not good about the harness and the leash. And I wasn’t feeling well and I just didn’t want to do it. So Melly had to chase me all over the house trying to get the harness on me and I was struggling and shaking and hot and cold and wet and miserable and just not feeling up to the whole thing so… I kind of hate to admit this part. I hope none of you will think less of me. Remember, I was sick. I was really stressed out. And I hate the harness anyway.

I guess I might as well come out and say it. I bit Melly.

It wasn’t much, just a little nip. But capybaras really aren’t capable of giving only little bites. Our teeth are razor sharp and big as daggers (only not shaped like them). So the bite was still pretty bad and blood was everywhere and Melly had to stop chasing me and go bandage up her arm.

I nipped Melly a little bit on her upper arm

I’m not proud of what I did, but you have to understand that I wasn’t myself.

After that Melly decided that I needed to go in my crate. That’s the same crate I used to fly down here from Ohio. I went right in it so I don’t know why she didn’t do that to start with.

Elizabeth came soon after that and they bundled me into her van and off we went to the vet’s office. It was scary in the van because my crate was rocking pretty wildly as Elizabeth went as fast as possible within the law (for the most part).

I was ever so good at the vet’s. You won’t believe it but I let him listen to my lungs and take my temperature (and that was NOT pleasant) without biting anyone! They wrapped me in a blanket and that helped. And they kept me in the crate, just removing the lid.

But the vet said my lungs were good and my temperature was 98.4! So I was normal. Only I wasn’t normal. I was still shaking and still sweating but now no one knew if that was because I was sick or just because I was nervous (hint: it was because I was sick AND nervous).

The vet sent me home and told Melly to watch me and take me to A&M in the morning if I wasn’t better.

At home I was still sick but Elizabeth and Sheldon stayed with us until it looked like I was starting to recover. Melly slept where she could check on me every time she opened her eyes. I didn’t eat much and I didn’t do much and I didn’t poop at all for a long time. Round about 4:00 am, I started feeling better. I ate my dinner from the previous night and I pooped a little bit.

It took me all day to recover to my old fun-loving self.

I recovered enough to roll in my green pool

I’m okay now and Melly says she learned some important things. First that the local vet doesn’t know *anything* about capbyaras even if his name is Gary and second that when a capybara shakes, sweats and has rapid, shallow breathing, that means he is in pain! Melly figured that out for herself, the vet didn’t even say that.

It’s a secret about why I was in pain though. I’m not telling anyone.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is me this afternoon. You can see I am recovered.

A better question is what’s not for dinner.

I am a hungry capybara, no question about it. Well, it’s just that I’m growing so fast I need to eat a whole lot. These past few weeks that I’ve been living at my new home with Melly and [...]]]>

Me eating a piece of corn

A better question is what’s not for dinner.

I am a hungry capybara, no question about it. Well, it’s just that I’m growing so fast I need to eat a whole lot. These past few weeks that I’ve been living at my new home with Melly and Rick, I have been putting over two pounds per week. It’s hard work growing that fast! In fact, it’s so hard that it’s just unreasonable to expect me to stand or sit up while eating. I’ve got to get maximum use out of those calories.

In the above photo, you can see my current favorite food, corn-on-the-cob. It is delicious. Sometimes I even eat the cob but usually there will be a little bit of cob core left.

My "first dinner"

Above is what I call my “first dinner.” That’s the dinner I get when Melly goes to bed at night. It is a whole head of lettuce (or kale or spinach or some other leafy vegetable) with a sprinkling of broccoli, a half a cantaloupe (or equivalent in watermelon), two cups of GPF (Guinea Pig Food) and a couple of pieces of corn.

I get the same thing or something like it for “second dinner” at around 3:00 am.

Sometimes Melly sneaks in apples or rutabaga or weird little potatoes. Sometimes they give me a bowl of cereal, something like Total with raisins. Sometimes I get a funny melon in stead of cantaloupe or watermelon. Sometimes Melly picks me a bowl of grass. I like a little variety.

I’m not like Caplin was, I don’t eat or like yogurt or popsicles. I do like yogurt covered raisins though and that could be the first step along a slippery slope. It’s a chance I’ll just have to take.

Coral bribing me with a yogurt raisin.

By the way, that is the new harness Melly got me for my birthday. I outgrew my old one. But look, it is pink! I mean, yeah, obviously I look good in pink and it does come with a matching leash, but what will people say?

Sometimes things happen that there is just no way to prepare yourself for. Sometimes it seems like your world has fallen apart. That is how I feel now. Caplin Rous was the glue that held my life together. You might think you can see that from his presence [...]]]>

Caplin on Dec. 31, 2010

Sometimes things happen that there is just no way to prepare yourself for. Sometimes it seems like your world has fallen apart. That is how I feel now. Caplin Rous was the glue that held my life together. You might think you can see that from his presence on the web and on TV but that doesn’t capture it. The first thing I heard every morning when I got up was his cute little happy Geiger counter noise and it was the last sound I heard at night, at least until he eeped to wake me  for a midnight snack.

I’m going to let this blog speak for Caplin’s life, what a wonderful, cute and unique animal he was, his tremendous personality and his gentle nature. I can’t add significantly to that in a single post.

I’d like to thank everyone who has sent notes on Facebook or twitter or posted comments on this blog or any of his accounts or sent me personal emails. I have literally received  thousands of messages of condolence and it makes me cry to think how many people’s lives he touched and how many people will miss him. Thank you. It helps to know this. I wish I could respond to all of you individually but, to be honest, I haven’t responded to anyone because I just don’t feel up to it.

We still don’t know what happened to Caplin. He had been irritable for a couple of days but nothing serious. When I left for work Monday morning, he seemed fine. By the time I got home, he could hardly walk. I got his harness on him and was able to lead him to the car but I had to help him get in. I rushed him to Texas A&M University small animal hospital because they were the only ones I thought might have the expertise to help. It was the longest 140 miles of my life. By the time we got there, Caplin could hardly move.

An hour or so after we arrived at A&M, Caplin had a seizure and the vet had to give him a sedative to bring him out of it. After that, he was never really conscious again. He died the next afternoon from another seizure right after completing a head MRI. A full necropsy is being done but preliminary findings indicate chronic liver disease that at the end manifested as encephalopathy. Apparently Caplin had been sick for a long time but never shown any outward signs of it.

I will write a new post when we have the final results of the necropsy.

If you would like to help with Caplin’s medical expenses, please consider purchasing a Capycoppy plush animal from www.CaplinRous.com. We expect to set up a charity in his name and will use excess funds to seed that. When we have that in place, I will post about it on this blog.

Rolling in a dry Capybara Creek 12/11/2010

Owners blog:

All of my readers surely know that Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris is the scientific name for capybaras such as my wonderful pet, Caplin Rous. What you might not know is that there are two species of capybaras, or possibly one species with two subspecies. The lesser known [...]]]>

Lesser Capybara (photo by Michael Peters)

Owners blog:

All of my readers surely know that Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris is the scientific name for capybaras such as my wonderful pet, Caplin Rous. What you might not know is that there are two species of capybaras, or possibly one species with two subspecies. The lesser known capybara, Hydrochoerus isthmius, is commonly called the lesser capybara, probably because it smaller than the common capybara and not because it is lesser known.

Sadly, very little data is available on lesser capybaras. Unlike the common capybara whose range extends across vast swaths of eastern South America, the lesser capybara has a very restricted range of Panama south of the canal to northern Colombia and into north-eastern Venezuela. The range does not overlap with the common capybara.

Ever since I learned of their existence, I have been searching for information and photographs of lesser capybaras but they are virtually undocumented on the web. Wikipedia has recently granted them their own page but the information is minimal and the photo small and not of hight quality. Imagine my joy when I found a blog post by Michael Peters featuring the great photo that you see at the top of this post. Since Michael made it clear that he’d taken the photo in Panama, this had to be the elusive lesser capybara!

Wild common capybara in Venezuela

Species descriptions of the lesser capybara don’t give much information about what distinguishes it from the common capybara. For comparison, the photo above shows a capybara that I saw in Venezuela. The color difference may not be real, the Panamanian capybara looks like it is covered in mud, a common condition for both wild and tame capys.

One thing that I know is different about the two species is the chromosome count. In lesser capybaras this is 2n=64, while in common capybaras it is 2n=66. The lesser capybara is probably also smaller than the common capybara, although varying accounts put its top weight at anywhere from 66 lbs to 100 lbs, which is within the range of smaller common capybaras. Caplin Rous’ weight varies from 100 to 110 lbs so it is even possible that he is a lesser capybara on the basis of weight.

Group of lesser capybara (photo by Michael Peters)

Michael got some excellent shots, including the one above of a family group. It looks like the female is standing and the male is sitting behind two large juveniles.

Caracara sitting on a lesser capybara

Michael made some interesting observations about the interaction of the capybaras with the caracara you can see perched on one of them in the photo above:

The Capybara were standing out in the rain. A Yellow-headed Caracara (a medium sized hawk) and landed on one of the capybara’s backs. The caracara began to feed (I assume on ticks or other pests). The capybara stood still, then laid down and after the caracara was finished with one side, rolled over onto the other. The caracara then flew over to the next waiting capybara and repeated the sequence. It did this with all 4 members of the group.

This is especially interesting since caracaras will kill and eat very young capybaras.

Micheal Peters with lesser capybaras

These capybaras, seen at the Gamboa Rainforest Lodge, may not be as approachable as the ones I saw in Venezuela. Michael says that they appeared nervous and ready to run for cover. He took all his photos from the distance shown in the above image.

Agouti

Micheal also got this great photo of an agouti, a small deer-like rodent that people often mistake for a capybara.

Needless to say, my next trip will be to Panama! Actually, I’ve been wanting to go back for years. I lived there with my grandparents when I was a child–my father was Panamanian–but I have no recollection of capybaras or agoutis. I’m older and wiser now and I have a good camera.

A ROUS by any other name is still a ROUS!

People are always asking me how I got my name. They wonder, I think, if my owner is some kind of genius that she was able to come up with the absolute perfect name for me. I’m not [...]]]>

ROUS from The Princess Bride

A ROUS by any other name is still a ROUS!

People are always asking me how I got my name. They wonder, I think, if my owner is some kind of genius that she was able to come up with the absolute perfect name for me. I’m not willing to grant her that but it is a pretty good name.

There are two parts to my name, we’ll tackle the last part first: Rous.

Rous (pronounced “rose” and I don’t want to hear any guff about it), comes from the book and movie, The Princess Bride. There is a picture of one from the movie at the top of this post. R.O.U.S.’s are one of the three terrors of the Fire Swamp: lightning sand, bursts of flame and ROUSs or Rodents Of Unusual Size.

You can see that I don’t look much like a ROUS from the movie. I don’t have a big mouth full of pointy teeth. I have a small mouth full of giant, razor sharp, rodent teeth. And the ROUSs in the movie are not at all cute so they really don’t even resemble rodents in the most fundamental of ways. Nevertheless, I love that movie and am proud to be associated with it by name.

The other part of my name, Caplin, has a more obscure origin. There are two stories that are both more-or-less true. I will tell them both.

When my owner, Coral (her daughter), Carl (her son-in-law), Philip (her son) and Sheldon (her friend?) were on the long drive up to Nacodgoches, Texas to adopt me, they tried to come up with a name they would all like. One of the things they were afraid of is that they would just end up calling me Capy, short for capybara. To circumvent that, they gave me a name whose natural nickname would be Capy. They claimed that when people asked if Capy was short for capybara they could indignantly say, “No! It is short for Caplin,” and act all superior.

The other story is that a caplin is a type of fish and it makes sense for an aquatic animal such as myself to be named after a fish. In addition, the infallible pope of the Catholic religion has declared capybaras to be fish and so, even though we have all of the characteristics of mammals, it made some sense to name me after a fish.

Hope that helps clear things up. Let me know how you like my name and whether you think my owner is a genius or not.

The image above is my classic pawtograph. It is of my right front foot (notice that my little toe is on the outside not on the inside like on humans). Of course, a real pawprint doesn’t look quite like that. Really they are messy and indistinct and I normally smudge the [...]]]>

My Pawtograph

The image above is my classic pawtograph. It is of my right front foot (notice that my little toe is on the outside not on the inside like on humans). Of course, a real pawprint doesn’t look quite like that. Really they are messy and indistinct and I normally smudge the front ones up with the back ones when I walk over them.

A front pawprint

It is also hard to find mud that has just the right consistency to make a nice impression of my foot. Above is an example my owner captured after following me around for months with a camera. (Actually, she is always following me with a camera so make that years.) That is my left front paw.

Just this week, my owner caught a break in her relentless search for my pawprints when I walked across the back porch with super muddy paws. (I also had a super muddy body but there’s no reason to go into that.) She finally got an image of my back pawprint.

My left hind pawprint

She outlined it in red to try to differentiate it from all the speckles of mud that I have no idea how they got there.

My owner was really in luck too because there was a whole sequence of three front and back pairs of pawprints all nicely lined up.

Capybara tracks

They are a bit hard to see so, once again, my owner outlined them. She made the front paws blue and the back paws red.

Outlined capybara tracks

You can see that my left paws were muddier than my right paws because they left better impressions.

The good thing about this whole event was that my owner finally saw that mud can be good. One of these days she is going to take the next step and roll in the mud with me. Then she’ll know what I’m eeping about.

———– Addendum (added 2010/12/28)  ———————————————

It was raining today and even though my owner yelled at me when I came inside, I knew what I was doing. Here are some really beautiful pawprints. Turns out that mud on carpet is the best media for this type of art, not only does it capture the print accurately, it also captures the emotional content of the scene.

Pawprints in the hallway showing my stride

Outline of my pawprints

My hair stands up when I am happy

In my recent blog poll, my hair/fur came in a distant seventh in the list of features that people most like about me. I think that is because they don’t understand how wonderful it is. My hair really is one [...]]]>

My hair stands up when I am happy

In my recent blog poll, my hair/fur came in a distant seventh in the list of features that people most like about me. I think that is because they don’t understand how wonderful it is. My hair really is one of my best features and it is seriously under-appreciated.

Capybara hair is pretty unique, even among rodents. Wikipedia defines three types of hair in mammals: down hair, awn hair and guard hair.  Guard hair is the longest of the three and is typically coarse, sparse, straight hairs that stick out through the other two layers. That might be typical but it is not the case with us capybaras. In fact, we don’t have the other two layers of hair at all, all we have are guard hairs. And they are coarse, sparse and straight.

My hair is so coarse that many people express surprise when they pet me. My owner says my hair feels like wire but a lot of people compare it to the husk of a coconut. I am not soft like a guinea pig.

My hair is so sparse that I really don’t even have any in a lot of places. For example, most of my belly is naked along with the insides of my legs. And even where I have hair, you can usually see right down to my skin. This is good because it would make it really easy for my owner to find any fleas on me if I ever got fleas, which I don’t.

Most of my hair is long but not all of it. On my nose, my hair is maybe one eighth of an inch long. Around my eyes it gets to about one quarter inch. As you move back along my body, it gets longer and longer. The longest hairs are four to five inches and are along my back and flanks. My owner made the drawing below to show how my hair grows.

This kind of hair works great for a semi-aquatic animal like me. It protects me from the sun when I need it but it also lets the sun come through to my skin to warm me up if I’m cold. The photo at the top and the video below show what great control I have over whether my hair lies flat or stands on end. That’s pretty handy for thermoregulation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Capybara hair is not waterproof but it dries very, very quickly. When I get out of the pool, I give one quick shake and I’m basically dry. I don’t need a towel and I don’t drip water all over the house.

Four-month-old me with short hair

Baby capybaras have relatively short hair all over their bodies. It isn’t until we are about a year old that some hair really start getting longer.

My hair is even more special than your average capybara’s because I have a little tuft of long hairs right between my ears. You can see it in the photo above. As far as I know, I am the only capybara with that extra flair, and that makes me special.