Donna Anastasi - Chinchillas: A Guide to Caring for Your Chinchilla

Acknowledgments

I WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE KECIA SANTERRE of Furry Flowers, who has kept exotics for over two decades and lives in the midst of her herd of seventy-plus chinchillas. Kecia graciously opened her chinchillary to show and tell all about these unique animals. This book came to be through countless hours spent talking chins with me, sharing her experience. Many of the animals pictures within are from Furry Flowers Chinchillas. For his review of Chapter 8, I am indebted to William Sager, DVM, of Sager Animal Hospital, who has been practicing small animal and exotic veterinary medicine for twenty years. I am grateful for Libby Hannas many and varied contributions and for my husband Tom and everything he did. And finally, I want to thank Lawrence and Kera from whom I learned firsthand the ways of the chinchilla.

Donna Anastasi

MANY THANKS TO KECIA SANTERRE, Judi and Emily Poirier, Libby and Stephen Hanna, and Haley and Tom Wendell for allowing me to photograph them and their beautiful chinchillas. Thanks to Dr. Douglas Meade, Valerie Baier, Olivia Sowell, Amanda Crespo, Valentin Tenev, Allison Bergeron, Tricia Chapman, Amy Anastasi, and Katie Anastasi for being wonderful models. Thanks to Andy, Dimitra, Laurie, and Julie for help with chinchilla wrangling. Special thanks to Amys chinchillas, Lawrence and Shikera, who endured many hours of photo shoots without so much as a nip. Thank you to Donna Anastasi for writing another great book and allowing me to be a part of it. To my wonderful husband, Jon: thanks for your help and participation. It made it that much more fun.

Ellen Bellini

This inquisitive chinchilla has the night vision and superb hearing characteristic of her species.

C HINCHILLAS ARE INQUISITIVE, SENSITIVE, INTELLIGENT, ACTIVE animals. They make playful and affectionate companions to the privileged few in their lives whom they come to love and trust. If you long for such a companion but are prone to allergies, theres great news for you: despite sporting the thickest coat on earth, chinchillas are hypoallergenic! This means that while you may be allergic to other fuzzy companions, you may find that you can keep chinchillas without a problem. These small animals are relatively easy to care for, but they must be cared for properly, as they have very specific diet, housing, and environmental needs. They are becoming increasingly common as pets, despite being somewhat exotic looking and difficult to describe. The Chinese word for chinchilla proves the point: it means dragon cat!

What is it? A rabbit? A squirrel? Sporting big ears and tiny front paws, dense fur, and a curled-up tail, the chinchilla keeps people guessing.

Storyteller Libby Hanna explains the origin of the chinchillaseemingly part bunny, part squirrelin the following fanciful way:

In the beginning, the Creator called out to all the creature spirits to come before him, where he would give them form. One by one, each animal spirit, from the leopard and the eagle to the tiniest field mouse, came before him; and he parceled out wings, feet, fins, and fangs, such as each would need to go forth and prosper. All day, animal spirits came without a form or shape and left as the animals we know today. But the shy chinchilla kept her distance, afraid. Finally, as the day drew to an end, the Creator called for any other animal spirits out there to come now, for this was their last chance. Only then could the gentle chinchilla summon up her courage and approach him. He told her she was the very last one, and he was almost out of parts.

Peering into the boxes about him, he found a pair of dark bush baby eyes and great big bat ears. As he shuffled boxes, he shook his head. There didnt seem to be a set of matching legs left: only one pair of little tiny front paws and great long back legs with just three toes and a funny odd one stuck halfway up the side. They would have to do. After dumping out the contents of the last boxes, he found a curled squirrely tail and long whiskers, ones made for a much bigger animal. He placed all the spare parts on the chinchilla, and she took form before him. He tilted his head and squinted at the strange-looking creature. The animals large eyes looked wet, as though she were trying not to cry.

Studying his work, he thought for moment. Then, an idea came to him. He reached up, and taking one of the soft gray hairs off his own head, he placed it on the chinchillas back. Instantly grew the thickest, softest, warmest, most beautiful coat in all the earth. With a shy, grateful smile, she leaped and bounded away, up to a crevice on a rock on a high mountaintop almost touching the heavens, where the chinchilla lives to this very day.

There are three chinchilla body types: (from left to right) the blocky brevicaudata, the lean lanigera, and the slight costina.

Scientists attempts to explain the chinchilla are a bit more, well, scientific. They classify these mammals as belonging to the order Rodentia and the suborder Hystricognathi (which includes guinea pigs but not other pet rodents such as mice, rats, gerbils, or hamsters), the family Chinchillidae, and the genus Chinchilla. There are two main species of Chinchilla: brevicaudata and lanigera. Of the two, the lanigera, or long-tailed chinchilla, has the smaller, leaner build but also the silkier coat. The brevicaudata, or short-tailed chinchilla, has the coarser coat and larger, blockier appearance. Initially, breeders tried crossing the two species to produce a more hardy chinchillaone that had the size of the brevicaudata and the coat of the lanigerahowever, this project stalled when breeders found that offspring from these lines were sterile. Domestic chinchillas were then bred primarily from the lanigera species, and today, domestic chinchillas are classified as being of this species, even though they may appear to carry some brevicaudata traits as well. The blocky brevicaudata body type seen in show chinchillas, for example, although to some extent a result of limited crossbreeding of species, has come about primarily through selective breeding.

Chinchilla Characteristics

Another distinct chinchilla type is the costina. Scientists have determined that the costina, once thought to be perhaps a third chinchilla species, is a variant of the lanigera; chinchilla folk still make a distinction between the two. The differences between costina and lanigera (for example, the costinas smaller, slimmer build and longer ears) are attributed to the costinas adaptations to living at lower altitudes. The costina is the smallest and most streamlined of the three but also the most prolific producer. Both lanigera and costina were represented among the chinchillas that first arrived in the United States and established this countrys original line of domestic chinchillas.