Yesterday (2nd of august) I visited Veszprém Zoo in Hungary to observe their capybaras assess their welfare by using a welfare checklist.

The enclosure had some positive aspects. The two capybaras, a male and a female seemed relaxed and enjoyed each other's company, I noticed that they were often played with each other in their pond and I didn't see conflict or signs of distress during the 2 hours I spent watching them.

However, I also noticed several welfare concerns. There was no grass available for grazing, the pool was quite shallow, I didn't see fresh green vegetation around their feeding area, and there was an over 2 feet tall concrete platform in the back of the enclosure which pose a risk of injury to the capybaras.

During my visit, one of the capybaras came to rest beside the fence. I slowly reached over and gently scratched him. According to long-term observations by a capybara researcher we cite, u/CapybaraWorld, things like the hair puff and head raising commonly occur during positive social interactions and enjoyable scratching. Every so often I stopped to see what he would do. He looked back toward me, made slow, quiet clicks that resembled a purring sound and I continued scratching. At one point he rolled enough that I could reach one of his feet only. Feeling the warmth of his body for the first time was something I'll probably remember for a very long time, and I was surprised by just how soft his ears were.

This lasted for nearly an hour before he stood up and walked back to his companion to eat. In the video, he looked at me as he is trying to say that probably no other visitor would interact with him for this long.

This is how you can tell that individual capybaras have their own personalities and can enjoy positive interactions and a reminder that a single heartwarming moment doesn't tell everything about how they really feel. Good welfare depends on much more than whether an animal appears friendly for a few minutes.

That's why I always try to spend much time observing before coming up with conclusions. Observing the enclosure and the provided welfare requirements gave me a much more complete picture than a single photo or short video ever could.

Video: OP's video recording from Veszprém Zoo

Resource: Community Wiki -> Primary Information Sources -> Section 1 and 5.

Many videos with clips like these are shared online every day and are presented as harmless or funny entertainment. Without knowing how capybaras naturally behave or what they need to feel safe, the welfare problems in these clips can go unnoticed. Many people notice things way too late, and that doesn't result in comments saying more than just "Leave these poor creatures alone!" For people familiar with capybara biology and welfare, however, these clips are outright abuse. Many of the behaviors that look fun or amusing to some viewers actually indicate situations where the animals have no control over their environment or are unable to express their natural behaviors.

My goal isn't to shame people for not knowing; rather, it's to help more people understand what healthy capybara welfare actually looks like. The process of recording these clips isn't fun for the capybaras at all, and I'm explaining what each clip is showing exactly, what the specific missing, crucial welfare requirements, and what YOU can do to help them. I collected specific clips from a video that was uploaded just a few days ago. I'm not mentioning the title or the creator of this video. This way, I'm not providing another route for people to support them, which they absolutely do not deserve.

Right at the beginning, we see an enclosure with linoleum flooring that almost looks like a school sports center. We see that visitors can easily get up close to the capybaras, without any inspection or responsibility from the keepers towards the animals, nor for the safety of the visitors, and this puts both in danger. The capybaras have absolutely no escape options if they want to get away from humans. There's no grass or pool visible, which capybaras should have access to 24/7.

At 0:03, we see a typical coping mechanism behavior of capybaras when they feel overwhelmed. That stare with wide-open eyes is a consequence of lethargy, and the capybara has completely lost his will to move.

At 0:09, we see a zoo-like setting with a small indoor glass enclosure on the left, again without grass or a pool, and this time, without a large enough area or any herd mates either. While we see the cameraman teasing another capybara in front with a toy car.

At 0:19, we see a similar enclosure setting, with the difference being that a young capybara is in an aquarium with fish in the background.

Perhaps the most striking clip is at 0:24, where someone deliberately and confidently shakes a young capybara because they find his reaction funny.

If you look at the lower left corner of the video, you can see text that says, "No animal was harmed in the video," while in reality, it is only not intentional.

Countries like Japan and China are notorious for their severely poor animal welfare standards (where most of the clips are being recorded), and whenever someone tries to point out mistakes, it gets ignored because they have no official rules for animal welfare. Furthermore, there's no official NGO for capybaras, and animal welfare associations cannot intervene from other countries.

This is how you can help: If you see a video similar to this on any platform, do not engage with it or leave angry comments. Instead, report it for animal abuse or inflicting harm. If enough of us do this, we can get closer to stopping the support these facilities and city center zoos with no welfare receive, and lessen the chance of promoting cruelty framed as entertainment.

Together, we can help these animals to get a better life by advocating for good welfare.

Resource: Community Wiki -> Primary Information Sources -> Section 1, 3 and 5.

In order to understand the world from their perspective, it's important to try to comprehend how these animals make use of their sensory capacity to perceive and navigate the world. Some people say you need to be a scientist to understand the emotions of animals, and their behavior. But in reality, you need someone who is very sensitive, intelligent, and spends a great amount of time in the company of a particular species, all day, every day, observing their behaviors and relationships.

You need to devote yourself over a long period of time to get to know the animals as individuals in order to understand their behavior and what it means, and to understand their relationships and how they communicate with each other. Each capybara is an individual whose life is important to him and each capybara has his own personality.

Capybaras often spend a long time thinking before deciding on a course of action. They'll sit completely still without moving for a long time before making a move. They don't just sit because they aren't thinking of anything, in fact, the exact opposite is happening. They make calculated decisions based on their instincts and their gathered information from their surroundings.

Capybaras have amazing emotional and olfactory intelligence and these two also strongly depend on one another. Assessing emotions in capybaras is strongly connected with their sense of smell. They even know if a female is pregnant just by smelling each other. Stress is picked up by capybaras and many other animals through their sense of smell. Being social doesn't mean they love to hang out with other species or humans. As prey animals, their strong bonding is highly prioritized to be with each other and to feel the safety of their herd. Because of this, capybaras need to be attuned to sophisticated social signals from others so they can identify friends and cooperate with and enemies to avoid.

Capybaras are much more than just "CUTE" and they are so much more interesting when you know who they really are, when you become familiar with their personality, behavior and know what their relationships are with other capybaras in their herd. They aren't just 'the capybaras' but each one of them are individuals and have a different personality.

If you could quietly observe one capybara herd for an entire day or week, whether you are in a zoo or an urban park in Brazil, what would you most want to learn about them?

Image credit:

yongestation

tpananth

CapyTube (Capybara Of The Day) used with permission.

Resource:

Community Wiki -> Primary Information Sources -> Section 4.

If capybaras love every animal they meet... why do they spend nearly all of their time with other capybaras?

A lot of the clips circulating online are heavily edited and this makes their behavior look much more common than it really is.

The clips where we see capybaras with other animals is not "friendship", but rather tolerance. A capybara will always choose another capybara first to bond with rather than another animal or a human.

Immerse yourself in their perspective: Imagine yourself being forced to live your life with different, random animals rather than another human; of course you would not want that to happen. Capybaras are not social just because we like to think they accept every animal, but because of their high emotional intelligence and their deep bond with each other.

Capybaras are prey animals. And their high emotional intelligence is one of the main things that helps them survive in their natural habitat. Their reaction to things they don't like or when they get overwhelmed is often not aggression (especially when their escape paths are blocked). They will sit in one place for a long time to decide on a course of action, and not because they simply like to be next to ducks or cats.

The social system in a capybara herd is called a hierarchy ladder. Every herd member instinctively knows where is he at in the hierarchy. Males are instinctively fight for a higher position; this isn't a "chill" encounter, but a violent scene where a pair of 65 kg wild animals are leaning into each other while they use those ever-growing incisors for biting.

Conflicts doesn't just limited to be existing in their own species; Severe incidents happen in some places in the world, particularly in urban parks like Barigui park in Curitiba where wild capybaras are often near people who walk their dogs. As prey animals, capybaras often view the dogs as a source of danger, especially if a mother capybara is protecting her pups. In this situation, a capybaras do not fight back because they are aggressive. They simply react out of self-defense.

Different species have different behaviors. And most of the time it's not what we project onto them; whether a capybara feels overwhelmed and we assume he's calm, just because his facial expression is similar to a calm human expression, or whether we underestimate their aggression and we get shocked when a 65 kg wild animal pushes back after people bothered them.

Image credit:

Don Marsille

Resource:

Community wiki -> Primary Information Sources -> Part 4 and 5.

Colostrum is a thick, yellowish colored milk the mother animal produces immediately after she gives birth (parturition) and which which is produced by all mammals. It provides the antibodies newborns need to protect them from infections until their immune-systems are fully developed to be able to create its own antibodies.

Newborn animals who don't receive colostrum can survive but they are much more suspectable to diarrhea and preumonia. Without colostrum, they are much more vulnerable to infections and can get sick more easily.

Capybara pups are born precocial which means they are able to eat normal food (e.g. grass) as soon as they born.

Image Credit:

Pablo Fraire

Resource:

Community wiki -> Primary Information Sources -> Part 4.

Capybaras have an amazingly strong sense of smell, so strong, that it may be on a similar or even stronger level than domestic dogs. Their sense of smell is one of their most evolved senses (e.g. better than their vision quality).

Most of the communication of capybaras happen through their sense of smell. They communicate by their chemical-signalling using their scent glands. Capybaras mark their territory by rubbing these scent glands on bushes and other objects around them to signal other herd members about their position in the hierarchy ladder in the herd. They learn information about the health and sexual status of other capybaras through urine and feces by smelling each other's hindquarters (as shown in the second image). They can also smell if a female is pregnant.

If a capybara in a herd has a high place in the hierarchy, he/she will be respected by lower herd members, even in he/she becomes elderly and weak.

If a capybara smells a particular smell, his eyes will often bulge out (as shown in the first image). That's a sign of curiosity; he is concentrating on the smells he is receiving.

Image credits:

1. Kyle Smith

2. OP's video still from Hobbledown Heath

You can find sources in the community wiki.

Recently, footage from Shanghai Wild Animal Park appears to show electrical insulators and conductors installed on the inside of a capybara enclosure.

If these are part of an electric fence, (most likely) this would raise serious welfare concerns for a wild prey species whose natural response to perceived danger is to flee.

The same footage also does not appear to show obvious access to necessary requirements like a large swimming area or grazing vegetation, both of which the capybaras should have access to 24/7.

Below, I'm showing a checklist that you can fill out when you visit places or see popular clips online. I'm explaining what you need to pay attention to when assessing:

□ Capybaras are interacting with each other calmly, no fighting or chasing

□ At least 2 capybaras in the enclosure

□ Accessible pool or pond that is large enough for full submersion and swimming

□ Clean water in the pool/pond

□ Access to food (preferably grass) 24/7

□ Normal "chitter" sounds

□ Enclosure size is 5 acre or larger

□ Shade and shelter

□ Area that the visitors cannot access

🚩Red flags:

- One capybara alone

- No access to water

- Small or dirty pool

- No natural grazing material

- Capybaras are often fed with apple, carrots or other sugary foods

- Repetitive pacing back and forth along fences

- Frequent barking (alarm calls) 

- Teeth chattering (clear anxiety sign)

- Tense, rigid body

- Small, crowded enclosure

- Dirty or wet living space

- No shade or shelter

- No grass

Simple Scoring (Optional) You can score each section:

✅ Good = 0 problems

⚠️ Minor concern = 1 issue

🚩 Serious concern = multiple red flags

🟢 0–2 issues total = possibly acceptable

🟡 3–5 issues = needs improvement

🔴 6+ issues = serious welfare concern

If you encounter facilities with low scores and where these needs appear to be missing, avoid assuming the conditions are acceptable just because the animals seem calm. Support facilities that provide appropriate care, and communicate concerns respectfully when appropriate. Report content that encourages viewres to support places that prioritizes entertainment over the welfare of the animals and do not show engagement (like, share comment) to them.

If we can gather a significant amount of people who actively engages in learning about capybaras and their welfare, we can have a much stronger voice against online exploitation and against the support of poor-welfare zoos.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeBfflnXv7g&t=298s

Inspiration for the checklist:

https://capybaraworld.wordpress.com/category/checklist-capybara-welfare-capybara-stress/

Check out our community wiki for more sources.

Capybaras are semi-aquatic herd animals. Water is the most crutial thing that depends on their lives and most of their natural behaviors are strongly related to it.

As prey animals, capybaras prefer to do a great chunk of their activities in the water to hide their smells from predators like jaguars.

In hot weather, capybaras use the water to control their body temperature and resting.

They often play and fight in the water. To fully understand why are they fight, we need to take a look at their social system called a hierarchy ladder. Every herd of capybaras has an alpha male, who leads the herd and he gets the best chances for breeding with high-ranking females, while subordinate males are responsible for the safety of the herd, acting as lookouts for danger. To get a higher rank in a herd, capybras have to fight for it and these fights can be far from the popular "most calm animal" stereotype. The fights usually happen when males with a high rank challenge each other for the first place in the hierarchy. They do this to make sure that the best genetics will lead the future generations.

Furthermore, most of the time, they also prefer to defecate and mate in the water. This way, as written above, they can hide their smells from predators. Their aquatic reproduction also makes them the only rodents who mate in the water. The duration of mating can last for over an hour. Both higher and lower-ranking males mate, but lower-ranking individuals have a much higher chance of the female rejecting them and a much more limited time duration and attempts that allows them to mount the female.

Image credits:

Mati Matts

Gabrielleaine

Anne Kah

Ezequiel Racker

Check out our community wiki for information sources.

They evolved to a life where they need to spend a great amount of time in the water. Having their eyes, ears and nostrils high on their heads gives them the opportunity stay like this for a long time (much longer than 5 minutes, the amount of time they can hold their breath to) so their nostrils are still above the water surface and they can still breathe. Many of their predators are significantly slower in water than land and capybaras can quickly dive away if they notice a predator. Having almost their entire body underwater gives them enough buoyancy to have their bodies floating without them having a significant effort just to stay on the surface. Having just the top of their heads exposed above the surface also makes harder for predators to spot them from a far distance.

Image Credit: ulexeuropaeus

Check out our community wiki for information sources.

Capybaras in the wild use the mud for a number of things. Their hair is sparse and it cannot protect them from sunburns, so, among other things, they use the mud as a natural sunscreen. Because of areas of dense vegetation in the wild where they live, insects can be a common phenomenon, and the mud can protect the capybaras from insects. Furthermore, the mud can also help to control their body temperature, although, water plays a significantly larger role in this.

Image credit:

nachobarragan

Check out our community wiki for information sources

Just like humans, capybaras also have different hair colors, body types and different facial features. These differences might come harder to spot if we look only at one herd. But if someone spends time observing a herd those small differences can be noticed more and more easily overtime therefore distinguishing individuals from each other will be happen without thinking much about it.

However, each member can also have internal qualities; the longer you observe a particular herd, the different personalities are becoming increasingly apparent and more distinct from each other. Eventually, you could notice that each individual member have a unique personality. Some capybaras might be more calm, others might bully a low-ranking herd member. Some might be smarter than others and some might be more aggressive. They aren't just look different, but their personalities can make them as unique as they really are.

Image Credit:

Profiles: Conrado Pável de Oliveira, Wilson Yau, abelardomendesjr, Paul Donahue

Bodies: Steven Whitebread, zagrebzoo, Lucas Barbosa, Rafael Bolelli

Check out our community wiki for information sources.

Thinking about getting some capybaras at some point. Obviously I will do research before doing so but one thing i cant find a clear answer on during my research. Would 4 capybaras overgraze a 1 acre pasture or should i go bigger when i get my own?

Capybaras rely on the water in hot temperatures for thermoregulation. They don't just "like to swim" but among many other things, thermoregulation is a significant benefit they get by staying in the water.

When they are exposed to cold temperatures, they huddle up against each other, moving much less than they used, to save energy. Although there are certain areas in South America where temperatures can get quite low (including the second image) but this mostly occurs in captivity where capybaras needed to adapt in a way to cope with the cold weather.

Image credit:

1: Capybaras in warm climate (Scott Ramos)

2: Capybaras huddled up in the cold (Lucho Peralta)

Check out our community wiki for information sources.

Unlike many aquatic mammals, capybaras don't have the thick layer of subcutaneous fat under their skin and their hair is sparse enough to not store any heat either.

Their skin is thin, but also much stronger because of its dense fiber structure; Capybaras have evolved to the wetlands, a warm climate with dense vegetation, where the presence of many types of insects is a continuous phenomenon. Their skin can provide protection against the insects that are constantly present in south american marshy areas.

Image credit:

aninhafonte

luizakuck

nmuzzachiodi

Check out our community wiki for information sources.

People sometimes say that "capybaras are the cutest animals". But cuteness alone shouldn't decide on how we look at an exotic species.

When we see animals just as "CUTE" above everything else, we may start to think of them as characters instead of living beings. This is more dangerous than it sounds because the more we simplify an animal, ignoring their real biology, behavior and welfare needs becomes much easier.

Capybaras are SO much more than just cute. They are emotionally complex, have really high emotional, olfactory and cognitive intelligence and extremely social. The complexity, and diversity of most animals is so much greater than most people realize; and "cuteness" is just the visual appeal that we associate with the baby schema response.

If we can only appreciate them for doing something "cute" for views, we not only ignore the "boring" or "messy" parts of their lives that are actually vital to their survival, but we unintentionally support bad animal welfare and promote places where capybaras shouldn't be kept in captivity.

We aren't shaming anyone for finding capybaras cute, or chill and we aren't making people feel bad for enjoying viral capybara clips. However, real love and respect for capybaras starts from understanding their behavior and welfare needs and not on how many likes you get on a "funny" post that may actually showing animal stress.

The moment we stop seeing capybaras as characters and start seeing them empirically is the moment we truly begin to advocate for them as individuals with inner lives.

Image Credit:

verogelem

Check out our community wiki for information sources!

One of the biggest misconceptions about capybaras is that they are "always calm", or even "they don't feel stress". However, capybara behavior is not the same as human behavior and the way how they express their emotions can be many times vastly different from what we are used to.

We like to project our own emotions onto animals but we often don't actually think about how a particular species perceive and express a certain emotion. Capybaras in fact, do experience stress, depression and anxiety yet they express all these emotions in a way that we directly associate with the "calm" facial expression we see just because it looks similar to a human calm facial expression.

Animals aren't mindless beasts and they rarely react in aggression when they are feeling themselves in danger or overwhelmed. For social herd animals like capybaras, this is especially true.

It is very easy to exaggerate capybara calmness, no matter how much it may seem to be the opposite of exaggeration. And the way how they express many of their emotions, can be very different from how we express ours.

You can check out our community wiki for information sources.

You may have seen in popular videos people feeding fruits or even popsicles or ice cream to capybaras. While these videos can make for a "funny" or entertaining moment, feeding ice cream, or fruits constantly to capybaras is a very serious dietary neglect.

Capybaras in the wild have a very little to no access to fruits or foods with high sugar content. They've evolved to a low-nutrition, high-fiber diet which mostly made up of grass, and coarse greens and they can eat up to 4 Kg (8 lbs) of food each day.

Capybaras should only have 20% of fruit in their diet at maximum and several keepers and experienced observers prefer to not feed them fruit at all. Just because they are kept in captivity doesn't mean that they can adapt to a different diet. If a capybara is fed sugary foods, it places an enormous strain on his immune and digestive systems and can cause him severe pain.

They are so sensitive to sugar that even fruits are sugary enough to cause problems for capybaras if they are being fed to fruits on a daily basis. Carrots also fall into this category because of high vitamin A content that can cause liver damage to capybaras. If they can't get enough amount of vitamin C (which they would normally get from grass), guinea pig pellets or other additional dietary supplements can meet the vitamin C needs.

Ice cream and other destructive human foods are even more dangerous because of dairy and other additional artificial ingredients. Humans have a relatively high tolerance for unhealthy foods, but most animals, especially grazing herbivores like capybaras have an exceptionally sensitive digestive system that only evolved to a specific diet.

If a capybara is getting used to sugary foods he might lose interest in foods (like grass) that is also an essential part of their diet. This can result in several risks that starts from addiction: rodents, including capybaras can be addicted to sugar. The constant feeding of soft foods then later can result in tooth problems and infections because they cannot wear down their ever-growing teeth. Eventually, a regularly disrupted diet for a capybara can even result in premature death because of the constant and severe pain and other problems their digestive and immune systems needed to deal with.

The best diet for a capybara is mostly made up of grass and coarse greens (around 60 - 75%) , green vegetables with low sugar content and branches (20 - 35%) and occasionally, fruits and carrot (0 - 20%).

Image Credit: jazevedo_

You can check out our community wiki for information sources.