u/Afraid-Ad-6930

In order to understand the world from their perspective, it's important to try to comprehend how these animals make use of their sensory capacity to perceive and navigate the world. Some people say you need to be a scientist to understand the emotions of animals, and their behavior. But in reality, you need someone who is very sensitive, intelligent, and spends a great amount of time in the company of a particular species, all day, every day, observing their behaviors and relationships.

You need to devote yourself over a long period of time to get to know the animals as individuals in order to understand their behavior and what it means, and to understand their relationships and how they communicate with each other. Each capybara is an individual whose life is important to him and each capybara has his own personality.

Capybaras often spend a long time thinking before deciding on a course of action. They'll sit completely still without moving for a long time before making a move. They don't just sit because they aren't thinking of anything, in fact, the exact opposite is happening. They make calculated decisions based on their instincts and their gathered information from their surroundings.

Capybaras have amazing emotional and olfactory intelligence and these two also strongly depend on one another. Assessing emotions in capybaras is strongly connected with their sense of smell. They even know if a female is pregnant just by smelling each other. Stress is picked up by capybaras and many other animals through their sense of smell. Being social doesn't mean they love to hang out with other species or humans. As prey animals, their strong bonding is highly prioritized to be with each other and to feel the safety of their herd. Because of this, capybaras need to be attuned to sophisticated social signals from others so they can identify friends and cooperate with and enemies to avoid.

Capybaras are much more than just "CUTE" and they are so much more interesting when you know who they really are, when you become familiar with their personality, behavior and know what their relationships are with other capybaras in their herd. They aren't just 'the capybaras' but each one of them are individuals and have a different personality.

If you could quietly observe one capybara herd for an entire day or week, whether you are in a zoo or an urban park in Brazil, what would you most want to learn about them?

Image credit:

yongestation

tpananth

CapyTube (Capybara Of The Day) used with permission.

Resource:

Community Wiki -> Primary Information Sources -> Section 4.