How to stay chinchillin’

Hello there! It’s your friendly neighborhood animal care professional here to share some fun chinchilla facts. The big thing that is widely known about chinchillas is that they are very soft. The softness of the fur can be attributed to how thick the coat is; their coats protect them from the wind, temperatures, and other extreme weather in their native homelands in the Andes Mountains. When the coat is soft, dry, and thick, it creates an insulating layer to keep them warm. Like many animals with thick coats, chinchillas have to put a lot of effort into maintaining the coat’s condition. Chinchillas exhibit a behavior where instead of bathing in water like us humans, they “bathe” in dust! The idea of bathing in dust is quite savvy for many reasons. For one, water can be quite hard to come by some days in the mountains, but also, they can wiggle that dust throughout their fur coats to loosen dead skin, falling hairs, or excess skin oils.

The biggest question we get often about our chinchillas is about how low energy they seem when guests walk by. Well, I am happy to report that chinchillin’ is a very important daily task for Gizmo and Stripe, our two long-tailed chinchillas. Chinchillas are primarily nocturnal, meaning they spend most of their active hours at night. This also means they spend much of the sun hours relaxing. Our guests will most likely never hear the chinchillas make a noise, either. Gizmo and Stripe are mostly silent, and that is a good thing because chinchillas tend to only make noise when they are stressed. If they are stressed, the noise they would make sounds like a higher-pitched dog bark, and we even call that noise a chinchilla bark. Since Gizmo and Stripe are rarely stressed here at the Zoo, it means we don’t hear that bark often.

So, to wrap up, if anyone ever comes by our habitat that houses our chinchillas in the winter, they will probably not see our two long-tailed chinchillas do much of anything because the daytime is also naptime. But every so often, you just might see them thrashing about in the sand to help take care of their exquisite coats. I hope everyone has learned a thing or two about chinchillas and will say hi when they visit!

Robert A.
Lead Keeper, Ambassador Animals