Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris): Facts and Habitat

What does a capybara look like?

A capybara has a heavy, barrel-shaped body, a broad, blunt head and short legs. Its coarse, sparse fur is reddish brown to grayish brown above and paler, more yellowish brown on the belly. Unusually for a rodent, its skin has sweat glands, and the hair is so thin in places that the skin can dry out if the animal has no access to water or mud.

The eyes, ears and nostrils sit high on the head, so a capybara can see, hear and breathe while the rest of its body stays hidden underwater, much like a hippo. The front feet have four toes and the hind feet three, all joined by small webs of skin. The tail is only a tiny stub.

Adult males have a large, bare, dark bump on top of the snout called the morrillo. It is a scent gland, and it is the easiest way to tell a male from a female in the field. Like all rodents, capybaras have a pair of large, ever-growing front teeth (incisors) in each jaw.

How big is a capybara?

Adult capybaras usually weigh 35–66 kg (77–146 lb), measure 106–134 cm (42–53 in) from nose to rump and stand 50–62 cm (20–24 in) at the shoulder. Females are slightly heavier than males on average. The heaviest wild capybaras on record are a female from Brazil of about 91 kg (201 lb) and a male from Uruguay of 73.5 kg (162 lb).

That makes the capybara roughly twice as heavy as a North American or Eurasian beaver, which usually weighs 11–32 kg (24–71 lb), and about 50 times heavier than a domestic guinea pig. For the full comparison with other rodents and extinct giants, see how big is a capybara?.

A close relative, the lesser capybara (Hydrochoerus isthmius) of eastern Panama, northwestern Colombia and western Venezuela, is smaller, with adults up to about 28 kg (62 lb). It was once treated as a subspecies and is now usually counted as a separate species.

Habitat and range

Capybaras live in every mainland South American country except Chile, mostly east of the Andes. Their range stretches from Colombia, Venezuela and the Guianas through the Amazon basin and Brazil to Paraguay, Uruguay and northeastern Argentina. They are lowland animals and have rarely been recorded above about 1,500 m (4,900 ft).

They are never far from fresh water. Typical homes are riverbanks, lake shores, marshes, seasonally flooded savannas such as the Llanos of Venezuela and Colombia and the Pantanal of Brazil, and the edges of gallery forest along rivers. A good capybara territory has three things: permanent water, grassland for grazing and dry ground for resting. Cattle ranches with ponds suit them well, and they have moved into parks, golf courses and suburbs in several South American cities. More detail is in where do capybaras live?.

What do capybaras eat?

Capybaras are herbivores that mainly graze on grasses and water plants. An adult eats about 2.7–3.6 kg (6–8 lb) of fresh plants a day. They are surprisingly picky, often choosing a few favorite plant species and ignoring others nearby. In the dry season, when green grass is scarce, they eat more reeds, bark and fruit.

Grass is hard to digest, and capybaras solve this partly by eating their own droppings, a habit called coprophagy. Part of each morning is spent re-eating the previous day’s soft feces, which lets bacteria in the gut break down more of the tough plant fiber and releases extra protein and vitamins. Their cheek teeth, like the incisors, keep growing throughout life to make up for constant wear. Find out more in what do capybaras eat?.

Behavior and social life

Capybaras are highly social. Most live in groups of about 10–20, usually with one dominant male, several adult females, a few subordinate males and their young. In the dry season, when water shrinks to a few pools, several groups may gather in herds of 50–100 animals. Each group keeps a home range, often of roughly 5–16 hectares (12–40 acres), and most individuals stay close to where they were born.

Daily life follows the heat. Capybaras rest on land in the morning, wallow in water or mud through the hottest hours and graze from late afternoon through the night. Where they are hunted, they become more nocturnal.

Water is the center of a capybara’s world. Capybaras are strong swimmers, helped by their webbed feet and a body only slightly denser than water, and they can stay fully submerged for up to about five minutes. They escape danger by diving, cool off by wallowing, and even mate in the water. A capybara cut off from water is easy prey and quickly overheats, which is why groups rarely stray far from the shore.

They communicate with a range of sounds, including whistles, clicks, purrs, squeals and a sharp, dog-like alarm bark that sends the whole group running into the water. Scent matters too: males rub the morrillo on plants to mark territory, and both sexes have scent glands near the tail. Their famously relaxed attitude toward other animals, including birds that perch on their backs to pick off insects and ticks, is explained in why are capybaras so calm?.

Reproduction and life cycle

Capybaras can breed at any time of year, with a peak at the start of the rainy season. A female in heat whistles through her nose to attract males, and mating takes place in water. The dominant male tries to keep other males away, but in large groups subordinate males also father many young.

After a pregnancy of about 130–150 days, the female gives birth on land to a litter of usually about four pups, although litters range from one to eight. The pups are precocial: they are born furred, with open eyes, and can walk and follow the group within hours. They start grazing within a week but keep suckling until about three to four months old, and they will nurse from any female in the group. The young stay together in a nursery group within the herd, and adults share the job of watching for danger. Capybaras become mature at about 15–18 months.

How long do capybaras live?

Wild capybaras usually live about 4–6 years, and only a few reach 8–10 years because predators take so many. In zoos, where they are safe from predators, they can live up to about 12 years.

Predators and threats

Young capybaras are hunted by many animals, including ocelots, caimans, large eagles and green anacondas, which sometimes ambush them at the water’s edge. Adults have fewer enemies, chiefly the jaguar, the puma and large caimans and anacondas. When a predator appears, a capybara barks an alarm and the group dashes into the water.

People are the other main threat. Capybaras are hunted in many places for their meat and hide, and some ranchers kill them because they graze the same pastures as cattle. Wetland drainage also removes their habitat in some regions.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classes the capybara as Least Concern, with a stable population across most of its range. It has a huge range, breeds quickly and adapts well to farmland and towns. Hunting has reduced numbers locally, and in some countries capybaras are farmed or harvested under management plans, which can help protect the wetlands they depend on.

Myths and facts

Myth: the capybara was officially declared a fish. A popular story says that the Catholic Church once classed the capybara as a fish so its meat could be eaten during Lent. Capybara meat is indeed a traditional dish around Easter in parts of Venezuela, but the story of an official ruling is a legend rather than a documented fact. The capybara is, of course, a mammal.

Myth: capybaras are giant guinea pigs. They are close relatives in the same family, but the capybara is a separate, much larger and semi-aquatic animal, not an oversized guinea pig.

Fact: the name means “grass eater”. The word capybara comes from the Tupi language of Brazil and is usually translated as “one who eats slender leaves” or “grass eater”. The scientific name Hydrochoerus means “water pig”.

Capybaras and people

Capybaras have lived alongside people in South America for thousands of years. They are farmed for meat and leather in several countries, and capybara leather is valued in Argentina. In some cities they have become a familiar sight on lawns and lakesides; in 2021 a growing population in the gated community of Nordelta, north of Buenos Aires, made international news, because the development had been built on wetland that capybaras already used.

Outside South America, capybaras are popular zoo animals and an internet favorite. Zoos in Japan have offered them warm baths in winter since the 1980s, and videos of bathing capybaras helped make them a symbol of calm. Wild capybaras can carry ticks that spread Brazilian spotted fever, a serious bacterial illness, which is one reason why touching or feeding them in the wild is discouraged.