I got a lot of interest about chinchillas in my introduction thread, so I figured why not have a little Q and A spot. Besides my 3 years with chins, I also bred rats for 7 years (my mom thought it was wonderful biology and genetic experience). I figure a good spot to start is the history of pet chinchillas.
Chinchillas live in the Andes of South America, and were discovered pretty early on by Spanish explorers who were very excited by the soft fur. Trading happened, and then eventually poaching. That was the 16th century, and about as much as we can pin down accurately.
Sometime in the early 1900s, a man took a small pool of breeding stock and decided to do a combined pet/fur thing in the US. I've heard anywhere from 6 to 11 chinchillas total, so it was pretty dang small. Whether all the chins today are direct descendants or not, they are still all very inbred. This and their.... 'delicate constitution' makes them very neurotic.
Now, it would be relatively easy to just bring in a few more wild ones to help with the gene pool but... because of the hunting and poaching, chinchillas are nearly extinct in the wild. There is one suspected group of one of the two species in the wild. The largest surviving population are the fur farm ones, with a smaller but more fiercely dedicated pet population trailing behind.
So, that is where chins as a whole are today. Please feel free to ask me any questions about them you like. Also, about rats. I know tons about rats.
I love Chins!! I took a small animals class in HS where I was able to take care of one for a semester, she got stuck under my bed more times than I care to share, honestly.
They have so much personality, I'd love to actually own one of my own at some point
OMG when i was a kid i wanted a Chinchilla so bad, my mom never let me have one unfortunatelly, definetly a pet i want to have someday, nowadays i have 3 dogs and i'm happy with them but who knows maybe when i'm able to live in a bigger house.
What didn't let my mom have it was the powder bath they take, she thought it would ruin the house and she was afraid i was going to get bitten by it, have you ever been?
I also wanted a Chinchilla as a kid, but I'm glad we didn't get one in retrospect... I'm not sure if I would have done a good job taking care of it.
Our family friend's kid did have one in uni with his girlfriend named Pikachu, lol. Pikachu got to run around a whole room of his house when I met him.
My sister had a chinchilla years ago when we were growing up, they are such adorable little things! And the softest animal I've ever pet. Her's would just want to climb up into your hand and burry her nose under your thumb. I honestly thought about getting one of my own but they do require so much care, it's just not something I'm ready to commit to yet. But one day!
Chinchillas definitely have a mystique around them but since they are exotic pets and high maintenance, you really want to know some things going in.
Chinchillas aren't that aggressive, they're just very upset. Usually, all the time. I mentioned in my first post that they're neurotic as a species. They'll freak out over stuff like changing things in their cage, getting fed the wrong thing, and being moved, touched or held. I have been bitten many times, and still have a finger scar. Startled chinchillas are very upset.
Being prey animals, they have a number of unusual don't mess with me features. They can grow up to 80 individual hairs in a single follicle, and with the hair being so fine, the sheer amount is what gives them their famous velvet like texture. They don't care.
If you grab for a chin and they don't feel like coming, they can release the fur you've grabbed and bounce away like insane space rabbits. Because of this, their little tails are basically the handle you'll be using to move them. Unlike rats, you can support their body weight by their tail alone. The fur is bristly and thick, like cat whiskers, so it doesn't drop like their body fur does.
This next one is pretty gross and will possibly bring back memories if you have turtle experience. Girl chins are bigger than boys, by about 1/3rd. They'll rear back on their hind legs and shoot their urine at you. They have very good aim and can get about 4-5 feet distance.
The powder bath you're talking about DrSloth is volcanic ash. They need to have a dust bath every few days or their fur will get greasy and clumpy. Their fur is so think that it can't dry out on their own (also so thick that they can't be attacked by parasites. Fleas and such suffocate). There's a lot of jokes about chinchillas being Gremlins/mogwai. The dust does stick, but the fur is killer. They shed a lot and the fuzz sticks to everything. And since the frizz is so small, it does not vacuum very well. Chinchillas taking dust baths are absolutely adorable, though. You should totally look up a video on youtube.
The last part of getting a chinchilla is the expense. They are very expensive to buy, due to the very limited gene pool, and if you decide to get a 'fancy' one, it will be even higher. I'm attaching a picture of a black velvet chin. Compare it to the first one I sent, which is a standard grey. The only difference is that the face looks a bit darker, right? And about 400$. (I'm a bit out of the loop right now, so my prices aren't 100% current. I'm going off about 10 years old info. Inflation and all, I wouldn't be surprised if it was higher now, though.) In addition, your vet will generally not know much unless they specialize in exotics or have prior experience (which is as rare as chinchillas are), so when they get sick, you have to sort of cross your fingers and hope.
Now that weekend recovery is over, I thought I'd work on making the thread title more accurate! By talking about rats today.
To start out with, why not talk about some rat myths? I'll cover the bigger ones, but feel free to ask questions or bring up other stuff. I don't know what I'm doing with this thread anymore, so we'll just wing it. Plans are for people who aren't me.
Myth #1- Rats are dirty omg
Rats get used a lot on TV and in books to show that someplace is completely trashed. A slum, abandoned house, even a cave in the middle of the forest. Rats = bad place. That has more to do with where they are than with what they are. Basically... they're prey animals, and the safest place for them is a place that no one else wants to be. And buildings that are breaking down leave all sorts of fun nooks and crannies to hide in. If you had a maximum height of ~8 inches, you'd learn to appreciate ceilings, too.
What about personally? Rats actually spend more time on grooming than cats do. They are so fastidious that they'll clean you, if you hold still long enough. It can be very shocking to think you're by yourself, and then feel someone start licking the inside of your ear.
They clean everywhere. If they can't reach it with their tongue, they will wash their hands and then use those. They'll even use their back feet as Q-tips to get into their ears. (you need an account to see links)
Myth Two- They give you plague, tho
When I was growing up, people would constantly mention the Black Death when I said I had rats. These days it's fairly general knowledge about the difference between fleas and rats, with the one being responsible and the other not really having a way to stop them.
But did you know... Pet rats have no transmitted diseases. Dogs can't say that. Wild rats are a different story, because of the reasons listed above. The reason nothing wants to live in dirty places is because they're dirty. Also, licking your hands after walking around an abandoned building is not the healthiest option.
Myth numero tres- I mean, they're not really social like a dog or cat. Can you even pet a rat?
You totally can. They love getting scritches and communal grooming is a social bonding thing for them, much like with apes and cats and parrots and a lot of other species. Rats live in the wild and semi-wild in a colony structure. It's safer and they just really like the company. Rats need companionship so much that if you adopt rats, you need to get two of them so they don't get depressed and lonely.
As for cuddles... It depends on the rat. Young ones tend to be like most other young things, climbing and exploring all over and inside of the couch. Once they run out of energy, though, they love to curl up in a pocket and just get free snuggles with their person.
I hope you enjoyed learning more about rats, or at least looking at cute rat pictures. Have any of you raised rats? Other weird small animals? (I was surprised at the amount of chinchillas)
Last edited by zypiris; 04-21-2021 at 10:33 PM.
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Aww I love chinchillas and rats! I used to want a rat as a kid. My baby sitter had 3 or 4 rats, little me was very intrigued!
Also I want to add to the rats = plague myth that scientists have discovered that most of the plague deaths weren't really the rats' fault. Rats with infected fleas did bring the Black Death on land by ships from the Black Sea to Venice and from Venice and the Mediterranean sea to the rest of Europe, but the reason it spread so fast and was so deadly was because the virus became airborne really quickly. So what initially was spread by rats quickly became spread by humans. (like some other virus we have had the joy of for the last year /s) i.e. if it weren't for humans being packed together in tiny areas and being dirty the Black Death probably wouldn't have been a pandemic.
Last edited by Erik.; 04-21-2021 at 06:15 PM.
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Chins are delicate little darlings, and they can get pretty diva-like. They can, in fact, eat lettuce. You want to do the darker variants since light lettuce is basically just water. Spinach is a bit rich for them. If you overfeed it or anything but hay blocks, they'll get diarrhea. Alfalfa (like for horses) is a nice treat that gives them extra fiber and nutrients. Vegan only, no milk products.
The fiber is partially important because chinchillas are rodents, which means that their teeth grow continuously. They need rough stuff to help wear their incisors down, or they get all kinds of jaw problems. You can give them all kinds of things to help with that including the wooden hanging toys you get for parrots and pumice stone. (Rodents can spit out non-food stop so they can chew non-stop. Protect your wires if you let them free roam).
On the other side, rats have very human guts. They can eat anything, and you can feed them pretty much what bits you have left over from your food (My mom gave them the trimmed bits from vegetables and such, and our leftover chicken bones). Make sure you give them a mixture of stuff, break out the old food pyramid. Fruits, veggies, starches, and protein. However!
Don't give them too much protein at once, their bodies aren't used to handling so much of it. It'll give them skin sores and can make their fur thin. I have no idea why that's what happens, it just does. *shrug*
Thanks for asking! It's been exciting to hear about all the small pets. Maybe I'll even hear about a non-evil hamster (The only one I ever had was a vampire fiend).
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I honestly thought about getting one of my own but they do require so much care, it's just not something I'm ready to commit to yet. But one day!
