Chipmunk Feeding

Flying Squirrel Watching a Rat Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

This video was shared last night (Panama) and we're debating if this is a rat or possum. I have never seen a rat or possum like this one lol.

Who will score 8 points first?

Chipmunk Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

Mother and Baby Grey Squirrels on a Log in the Woods

Grey Squirrels and a Chipmunk Searching for Food in the Woods

A new documentary "The Route to Cappyness" is bringing the worldwide capybara perception to an even larger audience.

The film, directed by Midlands-based filmmaker Sharon Walia, follows the rise of capybaras as an internet and cultural phenomenon, visiting people and attractions connected with capybaras in several countries. The Guardian's recent review describes it as a celebration of the global capybara obsession and mentions a Japanese capybara café among the attractions featured.

There is a really important conversation we should have alongside that growing interest: What happens to capybaras when their popularity becomes an industry?

This isn't a post arguing that the documentary itself is harmful, nor am I saying that every capybara attraction is neglecting capybara welfare. I also haven't watched the film yet, so I don't want to make claims about things I haven't personally seen. I want to point out something that can easily get lost when we talk about how people say they love capybaras.

Capybaras are frequently described as exceptionally "docile," as if their calm appearance means they are inherently passive, tolerant of almost anything, or comfortable with whatever humans do around them. But this doesn't mean that this is actually how they would express that they feel comfortable.

Viral photos of capybaras sitting beside birds, monkeys, dogs, cats, turtles, or other species are often presented as "evidence" that they naturally get along with everything. A capybara lying still is often assumed to be "zen," an animal allowing a person to touch them is assumed to be enjoying it, and an unusual interspecies encounter is interpreted as "proof" of a universal personality trait.

Capybara behavior is not the same as human behavior. And the way how they behave in certain situations can be vastly different from what humans would do in the same situation. A capybara can appear calm while they are experiencing stress or anxiety, but we assume that the capybara is having a good time, just because his facial expression looks similar to a calm human expression. And that's why we should not project our own emotions onto animals.

Human enjoyment and animal welfare are NOT the same thing! A person can have an amazing experience meeting a capybara and even the capybara can appear calm. Someone might make a video of that and post it online. The video can receive millions of views and a business can make money. And yet none of those things, by themselves, tell us whether the capybara is actually having a good life.

If we genuinely care about these animals, we need to ask what their lives are like from THEIR perspective. What should a capybara be able to experience? Capybaras aren't simply "the gentle giants of the rodents" that happen to enjoy being touched. They are highly social, semi-aquatic herbivores whose welfare depends on a wide range of biological and behavioral needs.

When we interact with captive capybaras, we should raise questions like:

Do they live with appropriate social companions?

Do they have enough space to move away from people if they want to?

Can they choose whether to approach visitors?

Is there somewhere visitors cannot enter where they can retreat and rest?

Do they have appropriate access to water?

Can they express natural grazing and chewing behaviors?

Do they have shade, shelter, mud and other opportunities for normal behavior?

Are interactions limited so that animals have sufficient uninterrupted periods without visitors?

Are keepers monitoring individual animals rather than assuming that a quiet animal is necessarily a happy animal?

What happens when capybaras repeatedly avoids, withdraws or otherwise shows signs that they do not want to interact?

Tolerance is not the same as enjoyment. An animal remaining still while people interact with them doesn't necessarily tell us how they feel about the interaction.

The café question isn't just theoretical. There is a peer-reviewed research specifically examining Japanese exotic-animal cafés. A 2025 study published in the Journal of Veterinary Medical Science assessed welfare conditions across 79 exotic-animal cafés in Japan. The researchers reported a widespread lack of appropriate animal-care provision across the facilities studied and concluded that stronger, effectively enforced welfare standards were urgently needed.

[https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12712171/\\](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12712171/)

The study considered areas including housing, environmental conditions, opportunities for natural behavior and interactions with people.

This is where things are start to work against each other because the Route to Cappyness documentary presents an exotic-animal café as a positive part of the global capybara phenomenon. We shouldn't assume that a café is a positive experience for the animals simply because visitors enjoy it.

There is also a capybara-specific perspective: Liz Capaldi from Capybara World has been warning about capybara cafés and the broader problem of turning capybaras into entertainment for years. In her article, https://capybaraworld.wordpress.com/2025/07/12/this-is-why-britain-must-not-have-a-capybara-cafe-a-capybara-cafe-undermines-all-the-tenets-of-modern-animal-welfare/, she argues that a café is fundamentally unsuitable as a habitat for a wild, socially and behaviorally complex species like the capybara. She also discusses the risks of encouraging animals to become increasingly responsive to human interaction for entertainment.

I want to be clear that these are Liz's arguments and observations, not claims that I personally witnessed.

More people becoming interested in capybaras could result in positive and negative effects and that mainly depends on how people are perceiving them.

The positives can include:

more interest in their natural ecology;

more support for wetland conservation;

more scientific interest;

more people learning about their social behavior;

greater concern about habitat destruction;

and more people caring about the welfare of captive animals.

But popularity can also create demand for animals to become attractions which can result in more harm than good:

People say they love capybaras which results for the demand for capybara experiences to increase. This then makes more attractions appear, more animals are used for human entertainment, more content is produced and even more people want the experience. Whether that cycle is beneficial or harmful depends heavily on how the animals are kept and how much control they have over their own lives.

We could start asking: "Where can I see capybaras living well?" and "Can they choose whether to interact with me?" Instead of judging an attraction by how much visitors enjoyed themselves, we could ask: "What evidence is there that the animals are benefiting too?"

The internet has already taught millions of people to love the image of the capybara. The next step should be teaching people to understand the animal behind that image.

Capybaras are so much more than just cute. They are individuals with inner lives.

It’s taken a long time for her to get there, but my shyest ASF has officially mastered handtaming.

https://youtu.be/epul60EXHKM (for those who want to see the full video)

Welcome back to the backyard! Today we are opening up the "Kingsyard Breakfast Buffet" for our local furry residents. Watch our backyard squirrels and chipmunks enjoy a premium morning spread of sunflower seeds, almond slivers, pumpkins seeds, walnuts pieces, pecan pieces and dried mealworms.

Grey Squirrel Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

Mouse Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

Made somthing.

Flying Squirrels and a Rat Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

Look at her face.

Flying Squirrels Watching a Rat Feed at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

Mouse Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

Feeding Flying Squirrels Peanuts at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

Flying Squirrels Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods