Capybaras (Hydrochoerus spp.) Fact Sheet: Taxonomy & History

Taxonomy

•  Recent genetic studies place Hydrochaeris within Family Caviidae
• Includes cavies, maras and guinea pigs
• Previous taxonomies considered capybaras to be in their own family, Hydrochoeridae
• Uncertainty regarding how capybaras relate to other South American rodents
  
• Species debate
  
• H. isthmius considered a distinct species by some taxonomists
• Genetically distinctive: karyotype 2n-64 and FN=104 (Mones 1991)
• Not recognized as separate species by other researchers (Flynn 2008)
• IUCN considers two separate species (as of November 2016)
  

Local names

• Some 190 local common names, most of native origins
• Kapiyva or "master of the grasses" in one Amazon tribe's native language
• Spanish: carpincho, capibara, chigüiro, maja, poncho

Scientific Name

• From Greek Hydro chaeris meaning "water hog"

Synonyms

• Ancestors of modern capybara: cavy-like rodents (cavimorphs)
• Late Eocene to Early Oligocene (37.5 to 31.5 million years ago), Chilean Andes
• Cavimorphs perhaps arrived in South America from Africa
• True capybaras first recorded in Argentina about 9 million years ago
• As many as 56 separate fossil species, most originally described solely on basis of teeth
• Did not reflect changes in teeth shape as a capybara ages
• In actuality, not so many species--reflect different ages, not different species
  
• Revision needed
• About 3.5 million years ago, capybaras dispersed to North America across the Panamanian land bridge
• During the Pleistocene Ice Ages, capybaras lived in southern U.S.
• Pleistocene fossil sites of Neochoerus pinckneyi (40% larger than modern capybara) in Florida, South Carolina, Texas
• Pleistocene fossil discovered in 1995 from Ice Ages pond sediments, San Diego County, California (Deméré 2007)
• In Pleistocene, capybara often associated with bizarre, large armored glyptodonts in wet habitats
• Only one genus and two species living today

Documentary appearances

• The Life of Mammals - 2003, BBC
  
• In the episode titled Chisellers, David Attenborough discusses the capybara.
• The Living Planet - 1984, BBC
  
• In the episode titled Sweet Fresh Water, David Attenborough follows the capybara and other species along the Amazon River.

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Rodentia

Family: Caviidae

Genus: Hydrochoerus - Brunnich (1772)

Species: Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris (greater capybara)
Species: Hydrochoerus isthmius (lesser capybara)

Describer (Date): Linnaeus, 1766. Systema Naturae, 12th ed., 1:103 for Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris Goldman, 1912. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, 60(2):11 for H. isthmius.

Image credit: © Biodiversity Heritage Library via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

McKenna & Bell (1997)
Mead et al (2007)
Rowe & Honeycutt (2002)
Wilson & Reeder (2005)
Wyss. et al (1993)
Kurtén & Anderson (1980)