page_title: Capybara
section_title: Diet and predation
hierarchical_section_title: Capybara / Ecology / Diet and predation
caption_attribution_description: English: Cattle tyrant (Machetornis rixosa rixosa) on male capybara (Hydrochoeris hydrochaeris), the Pantanal, Brazil Español: Picabuey (Machetornis rixosa rixosa) sobre un capibara macho (Hydrochoeris hydrochaeris) en el Pantanal, Brasil.
context_page_description: The capybara is a giant cavy rodent native to South America. It is the largest living rodent in the world. Also called capivara, chigüire, chigüiro, carpincho and ronsoco, it is a member of the genus Hydrochoerus, of which the only other extant member is the lesser capybara. Its close relatives include guinea pigs and rock cavies, and it is more distantly related to the agouti, the chinchilla, and the coypu. The capybara inhabits savannas and dense forests and lives near bodies of water. It is a highly social species and can be found in groups as large as 100 individuals, but usually lives in groups of 10–20 individuals. The capybara is not a threatened species, but it is hunted for its meat and hide and also for grease from its thick fatty skin.
context_section_description: Capybaras are herbivores, grazing mainly on grasses and aquatic plants, as well as fruit and tree bark. They are very selective feeders and feed on the leaves of one species and disregard other species surrounding it. They eat a greater variety of plants during the dry season, as fewer plants are available. While they eat grass during the wet season, they have to switch to more abundant reeds during the dry season. Plants that capybaras eat during the summer lose their nutritional value in the winter, so are not consumed at that time. The capybara's jaw hinge is not perpendicular, so they chew food by grinding back-and-forth rather than side-to-side. Capybaras are autocoprophagous, meaning they eat their own feces as a source of bacterial gut flora, to help digest the cellulose in the grass that forms their normal diet, and to extract the maximum protein and vitamins from their food. They may also regurgitate food to masticate again, similar to cud-chewing by cattle. As is the case with other rodents, the front teeth of capybaras grow continually to compensate for the constant wear from eating grasses; their cheek teeth also grow continuously.
  Like its relative the guinea pig, the capybara does not have the capacity to synthesize vitamin C, and capybaras not supplemented with vitamin C in captivity have been reported to develop gum disease as a sign of scurvy.
  They can have a lifespan of 8–10 years, but live less than four years in the wild, because they are "a favourite food of jaguar, puma, ocelot, eagle, and caiman". The capybara is also the preferred prey of the anaconda.
caption: Cattle tyrant on a capybara
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