There is still more than 1 day to go, and it will be the Year of the Rat in the lunar calendar.
Unlike the Year of the Horse in the Year of the Dragon and the Year of the Sheep, it is really difficult to find an auspicious word with "rat".
The reputation of rats has always been not very good, from stealing food to spreading diseases, as soon as the rats came out, almost everyone shouted and beat, and all kinds of rat extermination actions emerged in an endless stream, even so, many people still think that there are too many rats, and they should all be extinct.
But hamsters are one of the companion animals you are familiar with
In fact, rodents are a large family, they belong to the rodent order, the upper and lower jaws have a pair of front teeth that can grow for life, there are about 2260 species in the world, accounting for nearly half of the world's mammal species (about 5400 species), is the most successful group of mammals, there is no one.
In addition to the species that make us hate, there is no shortage of cute creatures in these 2,000 species of rats, some of which have been successfully domesticated and can be taken home to live with us.
Among the common companion animals, hamsters and guinea pigs are all well-known rats, and in addition to this, there is a companion animal that we are familiar with, although they don't look like a rat and their names are not too mouse-like rats, but they are full-fledged rats - this is totoro, a cute big mouse.
Where did the cute totoro come from?
The name Totoro comes from Miyazaki's cartoon "Totoro", in fact, their real name is called Woolly Mouse, but their chubby appearance is quite similar to the protagonist in the "Totoro" cartoon, and people have accepted this memorable and interesting name.
The woolly rat belongs to the genus Porculin in the order Rodents, and there are two species:
Chinchilla chinchilla: a wide range of distribution, historical distribution areas include chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia highland mountains, as the name suggests, their tail is shorter;
Fluffy Silk Mouse C. lanigera: Longer tails, also known as long-tailed or coastal woolly rats, lanigera have a much narrower range and are currently found only in a limited range of north-central Chile.
The tail is shorter, which is the short-tailed woolly rat Image source / Wikipedia
If the tail is longer, it is the fluffy silk mouse image source / Wikipedia
If we look at the distribution map of the woolly rat, we will find that both species live in the mountains of western South America.
The distribution of short-tailed silk rats can be as high as 6000 meters above sea level, and the lowest is also as high as 3000 meters; the distribution of villus rats is much lower, with a maximum of only 1650 meters.
However, their habitats are sparsely rained, generally arid, sparse vegetation, and strong sunshine, with a large temperature difference between day and night.
Living in such an environment, chinchillas also developed a skill, they can feed on the roots, skins and fruits of shrubs and cacti, and get water from them, and they have evolved thick and warm fur to resist the cold of the Andean mountains at night.
Such terrain in South America is the landform where totoro cats live
Hair is a major feature of mammals, generally living in the tropics and areas with too much precipitation, animal hair is short and sparse, while animal hair in cold areas is generally dense.
Hair grows out of hair follicles, and most mammals grow one hair per follicle, while a single follicle of a woolly rat can grow nearly 60 hairs, with more than 20,000 hairs per square centimeter, one of the best among terrestrial mammals.
Such thick hair provides warmth to the woolly rats and also brings them the disaster of killing.
About the killing of Totoro
It is impossible to know when people began to use the chinchilla, but it is certain that long before the arrival of the Spaniards, the native peoples of the Americas began to hunt the chinchilla.
They use the fur of woolly chinchillas and also keep them as pets.
All this may have originated in the Chinchas, from which the English name Chinchilla and the genus name Chinchilla in the scientific name come from, meaning "Little Chincha".
After the Incas conquered the Chincha, the cute silk rat and the thick and soft fur of the silk rat also became the exclusive property of the Inca nobility.
However, although there is hunting, the number of woolly rats is still very rich, and there were records of encountering more than a thousand ones one day in the early days.
Totoro fur in the warehouse of Copenhagen Fur Auction House Image source / Wikimedia
In the 16th century, the Spaniards came to the South American continent and met the woolly rat for the first time, and they also fell in love with the fur (fur) and began to start a fur business.
Its texture is soft, the color is uniform, the feel is very good, people use it to make a large piece of clothing or a small piece of clothing lining, naturally, you can also use a lot of woolly rat fur to put together a whole coat, which is undoubtedly a luxury in European high society.
However, limited to hunting tools and limited transport capacity, for more than 300 years, the chinchilla has not faced much hunting pressure.
The change occurred in the late 19th century, and with the development of transportation, South America began to export a large number of woolly rat skins.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the world's largest operator of woolly rat skins was the German Richard Glock, who was known as the "King of the Woolly Rats", and his hometown of Leipzig was considered the fur capital of the world.
Shawls made of totoro skin were also a luxury in European high society at that time
In 1899, he trafficked and sold 78,500 chinchilla skins, and in 1901 this number increased to more than 300,000.
During the same period, a large number of furs were shipped to the fur market in New York, and in 1900 Chile exported about 500,000 woolly mouse furs.
After this, the woolly rat fur trade began to decline gradually, and in 1904, Richard Glock traded 111,000 pieces, and then fell to 4,000 pieces.
According to statistics, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chile exported a total of 7 million woolly rat furs, and if you count the fur damaged during hunting and cannot be sold, it is estimated that about 20 million chinchillas were hunted during this period.
The decline in the fur trade of wool rats is not that fur traders are merciful, but that wild woolly rats can no longer withstand such hunting intensity, and are becoming scarcer and endangered.
Endangered wild totoro
In 1900, Frederico Alberrt, the head of the Plant and Animal Research Station in Santiago, Chile, asked the government to protect the chinchilla and develop a management plan, but no one listened to him.
Because a large number of chinchillas could still be seen on the market at that time, the government and the public were unaware of the situation of the chinchilla.
This reminds us of passenger pigeons and thylacines, and on their way to extinction, some long-sighted scientists have keenly detected a downward trend in populations and have made suggestions for conservation, but they have been ignored consciously or unconsciously, so that we will never see these species again.
Compared to thylacines and passenger pigeons, the woolly rat is still lucky.
Science used the passenger pigeon as the cover to tell the story behind the extinction of the passenger pigeon
Against the backdrop of the fact that the population was so small that hunting wild chinchillas was no longer economical, chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru, under a common agreement, simultaneously enacted laws prohibiting the hunting, trapping and killing of chinchillas and prohibiting their fur sale. The remnants of the wild have thus gained a breather.
At the same time, commercial captive breeding of chinchillas began in the early 20th century. In fact, in 1829, London Zoo had its first totoro.
In 1895, chilean Francego Irrazaval obtained a pair of chinchillas from the Coquimbo region, and through continuous breeding, this small breeding population grew to 13, but in an epidemic outbreak in the summer of 1898, all of these chinchillas died within two months.
In 1920, several young men applied to the Chilean government for permission to capture 50 chinchillas for breeding, with some success.
The artificial breeding of totoroes that we see now is basically due to Mr. Matthias Chapman
However, the woolly rats we can see so far are basically derived from Mr. Matthias Chapman, a mining engineer in the United States.
In chapman's story, he fell in love with the chinchilla at first sight, and after a battle of wits with the authorities, he successfully brought 11 chinchilla back to the United States.
Now almost certainly, his story is full of fiction and exaggeration, the only thing that can be determined is that the breeding and breeding of 11 chinchillas in 8 males and 3 females is very successful, and the vast majority of chinchillas in the world are currently their offspring.
Later, with the increase in the number of woolly rat breeding, the woolly rat coat was revived, and later, with the overall decline of fur, the woolly rat breeding industry also entered a trough.
Matthias Chapman bringing Totoro back to the United States Image / chinchillandia.ru
Although few people wear them on their bodies nowadays, with the characteristics of Cuteness, the woolly rat changed the name of totoro and walked into the homes of ordinary people.
However, it must be pointed out that although it is now very easy to breed chinchillas in captivity, the number of breeding is huge, but the artificial breeding only reduces the hunting dependence on wild populations.
At the same time, domestic animalized and petized individuals no longer have the ability to survive in the wild and cannot return to the wild, so captivity does not provide a supplement for wild populations – which means that in the wild, totoro is still endangered.
In fact, in the 100 years since captivity was farmed, the population of the chinchilla has not been significantly restored, and the population of both species of chinchilla is still declining.
This is one of the few photos of wild short-tailed chinchillas that can be found in image source/wikipedia
The short-tailed chinchilla currently has only 5 distribution sites and is highly dispersed, with an unknown overall population, and it is estimated that there will not be more than 10,000 wild individuals worldwide.
The October 2015 assessment showed that the number of mature individuals, that is, the number of individuals that can reproduce, is only more than 5,300.
Both species are currently classified as "endangered" in the IUCN assessment, which is equivalent to China's crested ibises and red-crowned cranes and one level higher than the giant pandas threatened.
It may be beyond your expectations... Totoro was originally an endangered species
At present, poaching against them has not completely stopped, and the more important threat is that mining and grazing are still eroding their homes, and the global climate anomaly is making El Niño stronger and stronger, which also brings more challenges to these cute totoroes living in harsh environments.
At the dawn of a new Year of the Rat, we can only hope that these cute "rats" can live a better life, thrive, and spend one year of the rat with us on this earth.
・・・・・
At last
Hope totoro's problem,
You can get everyone's attention!
At the same time, give everyone a goodbye to the early years~
The article was written by a guest author of One Dog One Talk
Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited
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Article | King cockroach / Bird Science Author
Edit | Yang Yu
References：
[1] P. Valladares, C. Zuleta & Á. Spotorno:Chinchilla lanigera (Molina 1782) and C.
[2] chinchilla (Lichtenstein 1830): review of their distribution and new findings ，Animal Biodiversity and Conservation 37.1 (2014)
[3] Edwin G. Bowen and Ross W. Jenkins, released and published by Shoots Chinchilla Ranch in March, 1988.
[4] IUCN Evaluation Page: Short-tailed Silk Rat: https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/4651/22191157#threats Villus Mouse: https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/4652/117975205
[5] T.A. Vaughan, J.M Ryan, N.J. Chaplewski: Mammalians, Science Press, 2017