The protagonist of the story is called Chinchilla chinchilla, a short-tailed woolly chinchilla. Most people may be stunned when they hear this name — some kind of big rat? I shouldn't be familiar with it! In fact, the chinchilla is one of our most common companion animals, and by the way, they have a more familiar name – "Totoro".
The name comes from Miyazaki's film となりのトトロ. People found that the image of the totoro in the film and the pet hairy rat shaped god are both cute and warm pompoms, so they simply use "totoro" to call the woolly mouse.
Cat, warm. Fragments: My Neighbor Totoro
The wild ancestor of the pet totoro is the long-tailed woolly silk rat Chinchilla lanigera, which is a close relative of today's protagonist, the short-tailed silk rat. The short-tailed silk rat we are going to talk about today has not turned into a pet. They have shorter tails, smaller ears, a lot more height and weight, and a much higher altitude. For the sake of remembering, let's call it "Big Totoro" in today's article.
The wild "big totoro" in the wilderness is also a cute and warm look. Image: inaturalist.org
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the chinchillas who have fouled</h1>
From a taxonomic point of view, the Chinchillidae of the family Chinchillidae, where the "big and small dragon cat" is located, is only a small family of rodents, with a total of only 3 genera and 7 species, all distributed in distant South America, which seems to be unremarkable. But if you have the opportunity to study it carefully, I am afraid that you will find that every animal in the family Chinchilla has distinct characteristics.
Top: The ancestor of the pet totoro " small dragon cat " long-tailed woolly rat; Bottom: Today's protagonist "Big Totoro" short-tailed silk mouse
For example, the totoro we are familiar with, soft and velvet, is keen to bathe in the sand pile, and can jump two meters high.
No matter how big or small the totoro, it is spectacular when bathing. Image: giphy.com
For example, Lagidium viscacia, known as the "God of Sleep", seems to never wake up, and the look of dejection seems to be very familiar, is not very similar to us who work overtime or stay up late to review.
I don't believe that I went to search for "Lagidium" myself, not sleeping and counting me as losing.
Another example is Lagostomus maximus, which looks a bit like the zebra Su Yi in "Peppa Pig", and her face seems to be coated with two black paints like PS, which looks very funny at first glance.
The plain with stripes on the face is really not cosplay zebra Su Yi? Image: pinterest.com
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > miraculously represents the victory of rodents</h1>
Are the animals of the woolly rat family so magical? In fact, all these magical qualities represent the success of rodents - the squirrel flying in the sky, the squirrel in the tree, the beaver swimming in the water, the field mouse running in the field, the hamster raised at home, and so on.
As the most evolutionaryly successful mammals, rodents have strong environmental adaptability and are found on all landmasses on Earth except Antarctica. The 7 species of animals in the family Lycanaceae are no exception, living in the barren Andes mountains and adapting to the land.
Barren Andes. Image: chicare.com
To adapt to dryness and cold, dozens of soft hairs grow on every pore on totoro's body to protect itself. Bathing is an important activity that Totoro does every day, which not only cleans the hair and grease, but also removes the smell from the body to avoid predators.
Since water is not available everywhere in the Andes, and water is difficult to penetrate into the hair roots, Totoro has evolved the habit of bathing with delicate volcanic ash dust. When totoro tumbles in the sand, debris, grease and dirt on the skin will attach to the dust, leaving only dry and clean skin, and it is not easy to breed fungi and mites.
Knowing such an evolutionary story, you will never hate tortoise bathing dust again. Image: tenor.com
Another example is the Nanshan, which can never wake up, in fact, half-closed eyes does not mean that they are on the verge of falling asleep, nor does it mean that they fall down as soon as they push it - Nanshan qi relies on sound to perceive the world. Their real home is in the dark underground, where dozens of them gather together to unite with each other and dig out a labyrinth of caves. They use a complex language system to complete everyday communication. Therefore, the seemingly silent "sleeping god" is actually using his ears to obtain information about the world.
What a "alert" bunch of Nanshan. Image: Search engine screenshot
There is also the aforementioned Zebra Suyi Plain. The barren environment of the Andes is not easy to survive, so they must first meet the best resources of those females who are able to produce offspring.
Female groups occupy the most fertile land, have the best meadows and shrubs, they live together all year round, the males come and go like passers-by, only the strongest and healthiest males can stay in the cave temporarily, and the "black and white masks" of these male faces become particularly eye-catching.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > disaster from successful evolution</h1>
Many people don't know that the totoro that seems to be roaming all over the world and lives a lazy and moist life is on the verge of extinction at any time in the wild.
Ironically, the most perfect features they have naturally evolved over thousands of years have left them nearly devastated over the past few hundred years. To put it simply: 1. Their fur is too good to become an important hunting object; 2. they are too adapted to the Andes, but unfortunately the Andes have changed.
The brown area is the Andes Mountains, where wild totoroes once found everywhere. Image: waymarinc.com
The natural distribution area of the large and small tonette is in the narrow Andes Mountains. This huge mountain range stretches for more than 8,000 kilometers and spans Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and other countries. On such a vast mountain range, the distribution of the two species of totoro ranges from 1000 meters to 5000 meters above sea level. Despite the vast desert in the Andes, totoro found the wild grasses, shrubs, and crevices that grew from the ash to get food and hide from predators.
Small totoro cats are distributed at lower altitudes, while large totorocats are distributed at high altitudes. Image: pinterest.com
The arrival of Spanish colonists changed the face of all of South America and destroyed the fate of Totoro. Beginning in 1500, the Totoro population was bloodied, and tens of millions of Totoro furs were shipped to Europe and North America for the noble and wealthy to wear. In the twenty years of the late nineteenth century alone, more than 7 million totoro furs were exported from Peru. In fact, because of the rough hunting method, twice as many totoro skins were directly discarded.
An expensive ($10,000) coat made of Totoro fur and extremely stupid. Image: bbhawk.com
In the 1920s, Mr. Chapman, an American, tried to capture wild totoro to build artificial populations. It took him 3 years to hire 23 people to catch just 11 wild totoro cats, which shows that wild totorocats were endangered at that time. By the 1960s, large totoro and totoro were reported to be extinct in the wild. It wasn't until decades later that remnants of wild populations were rediscovered in the wild.
Unfortunately, the wild totoro populations that are now recorded live on isolated hills and are surrounded by barren deserts. In a study of genetic diversity, populations of totoro found in the wild were even less genetically diverse than pet chinchillas from just 11 herd-based individuals.
This shows that the moment has come to a moment of flux – the loss of genetic diversity, the increase in inbreeding, and the decline in adaptability have greatly increased the risk of extinction in wild totoro populations.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > save an endangered species, it's not easy
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Totoro is so cute, why not protect it? Hurry up and build a protected area!
As someone dedicated to wildlife research and conservation, I know the difficulty of answering this question. In China, it took us countless human, material, and decades to pull wild pandas back from the abyss of extinction; at the same time, the South China tiger, the white-tipped dolphin, and a large number of animals with unclear names and habits have disappeared.
Today, we have deployed thousands of infrared-trigger cameras in the southwest mountains and surveyed the landscape with our feet, but we have not even fully determined where the forest musk, clouded leopard and jackal are distributed.
The only sporadic photos of wild totoro come from scientists working on the front lines to conduct research and conservation work. Image: Chincare
On the stretch of the Andes, the distribution points of large and small totoris cats are hidden in the boundless desert like needles in a haystack. In Argentina, for example, the only evidence of the existence of large totoroes was found in 3 copies of jackal droppings, and it is not known where the jackal caught the big totoro, and how many large totoroes there were; for example, in Bolivia, the existence of large totoroes was only rediscovered in 2017, and the last time they were found in Bolivia was in 1939.
The seemingly optimistic Distribution area of the Great Totoro (left: IUCN) has only a few isolated islands left after the specific survey
So it's a shame that you didn't bring a story with an optimistic ending. In fact, when I wrote this article, my heart was full of resentment and sadness:
The world is so big, but how far the big totoro can accompany us, there is no answer at all.
Big Totoro, the reckless Andes, where is your home?