Catch me if you can: capybara still on loose despite lure of tasty treats
To catch a rat, many call pest control. But how does one catch the world’s largest rodent, the capybara?
Zookeepers in Shropshire have been wrestling with that very problem after Cinnamon, one of the furry South American natives, escaped. The 25kg (4st) rodent bolted from her paddock at Hoo Zoo and Dinosaur World near Telford on Friday when the gate to the enclosure was opened to let a tractor in. A search was still under way yesterday, led by Will Dorrell, a partner at the zoo.
Dorrell explained the complexities of the task, which involves capybara sounds and smells, apples and pears, and drones. “We’ve got up to about 20 people involved,” he said. “It’s actually easiest to do in smaller groups for the simple reason that you’d end up tripping over each other, so usually groups of about five people.”
On Tuesday night, Cinnamon, who is about the size of a labrador, was seen using a thermal drone just 200 metres from her paddock, on land owned by the Ministry of Defence. She hid in a dense thicket, and zookeepers decided to put down live traps – large cages that she could walk into – rather than catch her by hand and cause further stress.
“Obviously we have got things that we can catch animals with, like nets, but they’re quite stressful, so we try to avoid using those, if at all possible.”
More innovative methods have been used. “We have been playing capybara sounds to try to draw her into an area. But at the moment, that hasn’t been overly successful. So we’re trying to use the smells of our other capybara, put some sort of dirty bedding down in certain areas and see if that’ll draw her towards it instead. Food is also being used … fruits such as apples, pears, sweet things mainly that she can’t find in the wild.”
The nature of the capybara was presenting challenges, Dorrell said. “Obviously, we think of them as being tropical animals, living in rainforests …That is true, but ultimately, a lot of the things that they need are just present in regular forest. So the woodland she’s next to at the moment, there is loads of food. There is loads of natural food, loads of grass, loads of waterways, ponds. They’re fantastic swimmers. The first thing they do as soon as they feel threatened is run straight into a pond. You can’t do anything about that, because they’re a lot better swimmers than you – they can swim underwater for about five minutes.”
Cinnamon is a year old and was born at the zoo, where her parents and brother also live.
Dorrell said the zoo had reviewed the incident and put in place procedures to make sure such an escape could not happen again.