A trip to Brazil isn’t complete without the awe of seeing so many cool critters. We did see the larger capybara at the airport in Sao Paulo, but no photos sadly as we were whizzing by on a bus too fast to capture it!
Meet Mr. Agouti!
Otherwise you will have to feast your eyes on these little guys: the agouti.
Much smaller than the capybara, the agouti- also referred to as the ‘common agouti’- sidenote does anyone find it strange they refer to these cool and unique animals as ‘common’? Like the ‘common’ marmoset I posted about earlier?
They look like weird guinea pigs and are actually related to them but have longer legs and can pick things up with their front paws and sit on haunches, much like squirrels. In a large park in the middle of Rio, there were about a thousand of them. I’m not kidding. The park was absolutely crawling with agouti…homeless people…about a 100 cats…Ibis…and geese? They are apparently very fast and pretty good swimmers. They are also regarded as one of the only animals that can open Brazil nuts! Funny eh?
Like squirrels at a feeding station.
It was a very strange and unusual experience for us.
Look carefully at the top of the trees.
They all existed more or less in harmony? There was food put out for the animals in food stations, so I guess the city or whoever is okay with this little animal kingdom happening. In Costa Rica, the agouti are incredibly shy and I never saw one in the two times I visited. Go to the middle of a huge city and there they are! All over!
There they are! Ibis on a mating display.
The adventures of Mr. Oats 