Budapest Zoo & Botanical Garden

Usually the breeding season for zoo-animals falls on the spring-summer months, this fact does not apply for those living in the South American facility. Our Zoo has a long history in capybara keeping, although in the past years - in lack of good breeding animals - there was a break in the constance of offspring producing.

It only got back on track a little while ago. In 2007 the Zoo was lucky enought to welcome a perfect female, Fruzsina, for our male Roger to mate, who by than was 6 years old. They warmed to each other pretty fast so last April 4 capybara kids were adding to the family out of which 3 turned out to be females and 1 a male.

Those little ones have grown a lot since, they are respectable sizes of capybaras but the South American enclosure still remains complete with the 3 newcomers.

The capybara is known to be the largest living rodents int he world. Adult individuals can weigh nearly 135 lb (65 kg). Capybara are semi-aquatic mammals found wild in much of South America (including Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Uruguay, Peru, and Paraguay) in densely forested areas near bodies of water, such as lakes, rivers, swamps, ponds and marshes, as well as flooded savannah and along rivers in tropical forest. They roam in home ranges of 25–50 acres (10–20 ha).

The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is also known as capibara, chigüire in Venezuela, ronsoco in Peru, chigüiro, and carpincho in Spanish, and capivara in Portuguese Its common name, derived from Kapiÿva in the Guarani language, means "master of the grasses" while its scientific name, hydrochaeris, is Greek for "water hog". The species’ name is vízidisznó in Hungarian which is “water pig”.

As a rodent this animal is in no way related to pigs but to guinea pigs. It's not a rare kind even so that people use it for gastronomic purposes, bluntly: they eat it.