Introduction to Chinchillas

Origin

There are two main types of chinchilla, the Brevicaudata, and Lanigera. Both are similar in general appearance i.e. have long back legs, short front legs, and four toes and an underdeveloped thumb, but the brevicaudata has a thick neck and shoulders and is heavily furred with a coarse hair that is lightly grey in colour and often tinged with a yellowish cast. It is the longer of the two types, but despite this it has the shorter tail. It's ears are shorter than those of the lanigera, and it's nose is flatter, giving the animal a stocky appearance. C. lanigera are narrow in the neck and shoulders and lightly furred. Also the fur is very silky and usually medium to dark grey with a bright bluish cast. Their faces are usually pointed and the ears elongated, making them appear very long and lean.

The brevicaudata type is now extinct in most of it's original range, from the high Andes of Bolivia and Peru to northern Chile and Argentina. Some lanigera still live in Northern Chile, but the species is practically extinct in the wild. Both are protected by their governments, and wild populations are on the CITES endangered species list.

Both species were brought into the United States for breeding purposes (this will be covered later in this section). It was hoped that the two would breed together to produce offspring that were large and blocky, and covered with silky fur. Early attempts to cross the two resulted in sterility in the male offspring, and, since the lanigera produced the best fur the brevicaudata were dropped from most breeding programs. Experts agree that domesticated chinchillas are of the type C. lanigera.

Chinchillas come from the Cordillera and the Andes in South America. They range up to the highest levels including up to the snow line. Here they made their homes in gaps and crevices between large rocks, and covered a wide area down the western side of South America in countries such as Chile, Bolivia and Peru at altitudes ranging from approximately 3,000 feet to as high as 15,000 feet.The cold is not a problem due to their thick fur, which I will describe later. The humidity in such places is very light, rarely above 30%. It hardly rains, with any precipitation occurring as snow in the winter. For this reason, chinchillas do not need an oily, water repellant coat. The ground is stony to sand, and the plant growing period is very short. So chinchillas feed for most of the year on dry berries, roots, dry grasses, and bark. To enable them to utilize this nutritionally very poor diet, they have a very long intestinal tract which tends to be upset by too rich a diet.

Due to the lack of water in their natural environment, chins have evolved a method of bathing which does not involve water, the dust bath. They bathe in dry rock dust, powder themselves thoroughly with it, and then shake it off along with any grease and fur that might stick to it. We simulate this by providing a dust bath every day for their use.

Chinchillas are twilight animals who see well with their large eyes, so they are mainly up at dawn and in the evening. They shy away from harsh light and need a quiet place to hide undisturbed during the day. In the wild they will sleep in hollows, caves, and other similar hiding places. This makes them an ideal pet for people at work during the day. In such households the house is empty during the day, allowing the chin to sleep undisturbed. When everyone returns home in the evening they are wide awake and active in their cage.

In the wild they live in family units and communicate by means of soft bleating. When danger threatens, however, they can emit a loud barking warning which sends the whole family running for cover. When threatened they rear up on their hind legs and spray urine at their adversary, very accurately as I can tell you from personal experience. Young females are prone to this type of behavior, though it does tend to stop once the chin is used to it's new home and owners.

Coming to America !!

It is sad to say, that without the intervention of the fur trade, the chinchilla would now be extinct. The superb quality of the chinchillas fur was also their downfall in the wild. They were trapped and hunted for their fur for the clothing trade, particularly for the royalty within Europe. By the time the governments of Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Peru put restrictions on the hunting and collecting of chinchilla furs it was to late. The only factor that saved what was left of the wild chinchilla at that time was it became uneconomical to hunt the few remaining chinchillas left in the wild. In 1910 Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru under a mutual agreement simultaneously decreed laws, which prohibited the hunting, trapping, and killing of the Chinchilla and prohibited the selling of their pelts.

It is widely believed that had it not been for an American called Mathias F. Chapman, pictured above, the chinchilla would only be found as a stuffed exhibit in a museum. This unfortunately is a myth. Chapman only brought eight males and three females to California, which would make the assumption that every chin around today was descended from these animals a bit difficult to believe !!! There are hundreds of thousands of chinchillas in homes around the globe, for them all to be from this original breeding pool would be biologically and genetically simply not possible. During the years following Chapman's importation there were repeated imports of chinchillas into North America from the Andes. Some animals were even brought to Europe, including to Germany, as late as 1966. Yet some legends tend to survive in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

Chapman's Story.

Mathias F. Chapman was working as a mining engineer for Anaconda Copper in Chile in 1918. One day a local native Chilean Indian brought a chinchilla he had captured to Chapman’s camp in a tin can to sell. Chapman bought the chinchilla and became more and more interested in this little animal. From his experiences with this chinchilla he developed a plan to obtain more of these animals and transport them to the United States. About a year after he saw his first chinchilla, Chapman applied to the Chilean government for permission to capture several and transport them to the United States. By this time however the animals were close to extinction as a result of excessive fur trapping, so the government was reluctant to grant trapping privileges, let alone take animals out of the country. Persistence on Chapman's part paid off though, and eventually the government relented on both issues. In 1919, Mr. Chapman set about capturing as many chinchillas as possible so that he could establish a breeding population.

It took three years for Chapman and a team of twenty three trappers to acquire just eleven chinchillas worthy of breeding. Since almost all of the lowland chinchillas had already been trapped out by the time Chapman began his collection, it is thought that most of his animals were of the Lanigera type. Of these eleven chinchillas, it is known that only three were females. Having acquired his stock, Chapman then spent the next year slowly bringing them down from the high altitude (approx. 12,000 feet above sea level). He believed that previous attempts to capture chinchillas had failed due to the lack of time spent adjusting the chinchillas to their new surroundings. The chinchillas traveled in large wooden cages that Chapman had specially built. They were shaded from the direct sun and, when necessary, were cooled with ice. Thanks to Chapman’s care, all eleven chinchillas made it down the mountain.

The chinchillas were then transported by ship to Los Angeles in America. Actually, in order to get his chinchillas aboard the ship, Mr. Chapman had his friends bring the chinchillas aboard in their pockets. Only after they were well out to sea did Mr. Chapman inform the captain that he had the animals in his cabin. Chapman had the cages brought up from the hold and threatened to sue if there was any interference with the chinchillas. In order to fight the heat during the trip, both Mr. and Mrs. Chapman took turns stocking the ice compartments built into the cages and draping the cages with cooling wet towels.

The twelve chinchillas stayed briefly in Los Angeles until the first U.S. chinchilla farm was built in the high desert area of Tehachapi, California.

Mr. Chapman endured several problems at first. From the start he had problems with chemical matter in the spring water. It was thought this contamination may have affected the chinchillas' ability to reproduce. Then in 1931 he had to deal with the theft of nearly half his herd. The thieves broke the padlocks off the doors of the chinchillas's houses. He was never able to recover the animals.

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