Chinchilla Facts: Origins

"This is Lauren on behalf of Expert Village and we are going to talk a little bit about where Chinchillas came from. Chinchillas originally lived in the Andes Mountain of Olivia Peru in Argentina. They are nocturnal herbivores that were not spotted in the high altitudes first by explorers that went up there. For this reason, they have the thick soft fur which is highly valued. Originally they were poached for their fur. In the late 19th and 20th Century, fur hunters and traders captured them for pelts. Fur farms later on raised them for their fur as well. Over time they were fail to make really good pets so that is why you see them in the pet stores today. Mouse trapping though almost made them extinct around 1923 and that is when an explorer first went up there and was able to capture the first 5 chinchillas and bring them back to the US alive. Before that, other explorers had gone up and tried to do the same thing but they took them out of their environment too quickly. They are pretty sensitive to elevation changes, temperature changes and stress and so he found taking them down slowly actually kept from dying as it happened prior to that. From those first 5 Chinchillas, the ones in the US originated from that group. Stay with us for the next segment and we are going to talk about Chinchilla personality."