Mammals
Chinchilla
Chinchilla lanigera · also called long-tailed chinchilla, Chilean chinchilla
The chinchilla is a small, plush-furred rodent from the high, cold, dry mountains of Chile. Its extraordinary coat — the softest and densest of any land mammal — made it one of the most prized fur animals in the world, and very nearly wiped it out.
Overview
Wild chinchillas live on arid, rocky Andean slopes, historically at 3,000 to 5,000 metres and now mostly lower, in country of sparse shrubs, cacti, and rock outcrops. They shelter by day in crevices and burrows and emerge around dawn and dusk to feed. They are colonial and social, living in groups of a few to a hundred or more, and communicate with a wide range of chirps, barks, and squeals. Females are dominant and can be aggressive toward males.
The coat
Chinchilla fur is dense because the mountains are harsh — thin, cold air with fierce temperature swings. Each follicle grows 50 or more hairs (a human follicle grows one), producing a coat of around 20,000 hairs per square centimetre that traps a thick layer of insulating air. The density has a side effect: external parasites cannot get through it, and the fur cannot dry once wet.
Living dry
Because a wet coat is dangerous, chinchillas never bathe in water. They keep clean by rolling in fine dust — volcanic ash and weathered rock powder — which wicks away skin oil and moisture. They also get most of their water from their food and from dew, and their kidneys produce highly concentrated urine, all adaptations to a place with almost no free water.
Reproduction
Chinchillas breed once or twice a year, producing small litters (usually one to three) of precocial young — born fully furred, open-eyed, and able to move within an hour. The pregnancy is long for a rodent, about 111 days. Other females in the group may help groom and guard the kits.
Threats and conservation
The chinchilla is Endangered. The historic cause was the fur trade: because each coat needs more than a hundred pelts, tens of millions of animals were killed between the early 1800s and 1920s, and the wild population never recovered. Trade is now banned and the species protected, but the surviving colonies are few, small, and fragmented, and face continuing pressure from mining, habitat degradation, firewood collection, and livestock grazing. Nearly all of the world’s chinchillas today are domesticated animals descended from a handful exported in the 1920s.
Chinchilla: common questions
Why is chinchilla fur so dense?
It is an adaptation to a cold, high-altitude environment with thin air and big day-night temperature swings. Where a human hair follicle grows one hair and a cat's grows two or three, a chinchilla follicle produces 50 or more, packing in up to around 20,000 hairs per square centimetre — the densest fur of any land mammal. The coat is so tight that fleas and other parasites cannot penetrate it and drown or suffocate if they try.
Why do chinchillas take dust baths instead of water baths?
Because their fur is too dense to dry out. If a chinchilla gets soaked, water is trapped against the skin and cannot evaporate, leading to chilling and fungal skin infections. Instead they clean themselves by rolling vigorously in fine, dry volcanic ash or pumice dust, which absorbs excess oil and moisture and keeps the coat fluffy. Pet chinchillas are given a bowl of special dust a few times a week.
Why are wild chinchillas endangered?
The fur trade. Chinchilla pelts were so valuable — it takes over 100 skins to make one coat — that from the 1800s to the 1920s tens of millions of animals were killed and shipped from South America, collapsing the wild population. Hunting was banned and the species is protected, but recovery has been minimal — the remaining colonies are tiny and isolated, and they now face habitat loss from mining, firewood cutting, and grazing by livestock, plus predation and, potentially, competition. The closely related short-tailed chinchilla is even rarer.
Are pet chinchillas the same as wild ones?
They are domesticated descendants of a small number of wild chinchillas taken to the United States in the 1920s by Mathias Chapman, who was granted permission to export 11 animals. Essentially every pet and fur-farm chinchilla today traces back to that founder group, which is why the captive population has low genetic diversity. They are the same species as the wild long-tailed chinchilla but many generations removed and bred in a range of colours.