Pacarana
Dinomys branickii
— Where the name comes from
Dinomys is “terrible mouse”, from deinós, the same adjective as in dinosaur: whoever described it in 1873 was struck by its bulk and its molars. The epithet recalls the Polish count Konstanty Branicki, who financed the Peruvian expedition. The common name comes from Tupi-Guaraní and means “false paca”: it resembles the paca but is not one, and in Amazonia the distinction had always been made.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Rodents
- Habitat
- Montane and cloud forest of the Andes, between 200 and 3,200 m
- Range
- Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, western Brazil
- Size
- 60–80 cm, tail 20 cm, 10–15 kg
- Diet
- Leaves, fruit, shoots, seeds
- Lifespan
- 13 years in captivity
— Characteristics
- 01
It is the third largest rodent in the world, after the capybara and the beaver.
- 02
It climbs trees despite its bulk and its slowness.
- 03
It lives in family groups and communicates by whistles, grunts and tooth-chattering.
— What sets it apart
It is the last survivor of a family that included the largest rodents that ever lived. Its relative Josephoartigasia, which lived in Uruguay three million years ago, weighed a tonne and is the largest rodent whose skull we possess; other Dinomyidae reached the size of a buffalo. Of that dynasty of giants there remains a twelve-kilo animal, slow, rare and hardly ever seen, living in the Andean mist.
