pacas

Dwarf brockets were there (brockets Mazama are a group of small-bodied deer known from Mexico and South America), as were coro-coros (also called bamboo rats Dactylomys, coro-coros are arboreal members of Echimyidae), Mountain pacas Cuniculus taczonowskii*, AND an abrocomid that Eaton recognized as a new species.

Archive 2006-03-01

* Eaton (1916) misidentified the Mountain pacas and thought that the Machu Picchu remains represented a new species that he called Agouti thomasi.

Archive 2006-03-01

The dwarf brocket present there turned out to belong to a new species that wasn’t named until 1959 (when Hershkovitz named it Mazama chunyi*), and the coro-coros and mountain pacas present in the tombs have also proved to be cryptic and elusive.

Archive 2006-03-01

They were followed by a number of mice, pacas, and muskrats armed with wheeled containers and double-handed scoops.

The Lives of Felix Gunderson

A pair of armed pacas entered, espied her, and came a-rushing.

The Lives of Felix Gunderson

Why were they joined by the entire infraorder of caviomorph rodents, including guinea pigs, agoutis, pacas, maras, capybaras, chinchillas and lots of others, a large group of characteristically South American rodents, found nowhere else?

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

Terborgh and Winter referred only generally to “excessive densities,” but in a later paper, Terborgh reported that coatimundis, pacas, and agoutis were more than ten times as abundant on Barro Colorado as at similar mainland sites.

The Song of The Dodo

The peccaries, the possums, the coatimundis, the pacas, and the agoutis all forage on the ground; under normal conditions, they are all subject to prédation by pumas and jaguars.

The Song of The Dodo

Marmosets and pacas scampered over the boulders and talus in search of nuts and berries.

A Triumph of Souls

The pacas were creatures a little larger than hares, and not unlike them, except that their ears were shorter.

The Forest Exiles The Perils of a Peruvian Family in the Wilds of the Amazon