The pacarana (''Dinomys branickii'') is a rare and slow-moving

hystricognath The Hystricognathi are an infraorder of rodents, distinguished from other rodents by the bone structure of their skulls. The masseter medialis (a jaw muscle) passes partially through a hole below each eye socket (called the infraorbital foramen) ...

rodent indigenous to South America. Native

Tupi people A subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, the Tupi people were one of the largest groups of indigenous Brazilians before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 ...

call it the ''pacarana'' (false paca) because it is superficially similar to the

paca A paca is a member of the genus ''Cuniculus'' of ground-dwelling, herbivorous rodents in South and Central America. It is the only genus in the family Cuniculidae. Pacas are large rodents with dots and stripes on their sides, short ears, and ...

, a different rodent which is not in the same family. The pacarana has a chunky body and is large for a rodent, weighing up to and measuring up to in length, not including the thick, furry tail. The pacarana is

nocturnal Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed sens ...

and is found only in tropical forests of the western

Amazon River basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...

and adjacent foothills of the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

Mountains. It ranges from northwestern

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

and

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

to western

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

, including the

Yungas The Yungas (Aymara ''yunka'' warm or temperate Andes or earth, Quechua ''yunka'' warm area on the slopes of the Andes) is a bioregion of a narrow band of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains from Peru and Bolivia, and extends into ...

. It is common in Cotapata National Park in Bolivia. The pacarana is the sole extant member of the rodent family

Dinomyidae The Dinomyidae are a family of South American hystricognath rodents: the dinomyids were once a very speciose group, but now contains only a single living species, the pacarana. Several of the extinct dinomyids were among the largest rodents know ...

in the

infraorder Order ( la, ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and ...

Caviomorpha Caviomorpha is the rodent infraorder or parvorder that unites all New World hystricognaths. It is supported by both fossil and molecular evidence. The Caviomorpha was for a time considered to be a separate order outside the Rodentia, but is now ...

; the paca that it resembles in appearance is in a different Caviomorph family, the Cuniculidae. Initially, the pacarana was regarded as a member of the superfamily

Muroidea The Muroidea are a large superfamily of rodents, including mice, rats, voles, hamsters, lemmings, gerbils, and many other relatives. Although the Muroidea originated in Eurasia, they occupy a vast variety of habitats on every continent excep ...

, that includes the true mice, but that view was abandoned in the face of evidence that suggests that the pacarana is in the family Dinomyidae together with extinct animals such as ''

Phoberomys pattersoni ''Phoberomys pattersoni'' is an extinct rodent that lived in the ancient Orinoco River delta around 8 million years ago. It was the second-largest of the roughly seven species of its genus. Like many other rodents, ''Phoberomys'' was a herbivore ...

'' and ''

Josephoartigasia monesi ''Josephoartigasia'' is an extinct genus of enormous dinomyid rodent from the Early Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of Uruguay. The only living member of Dinomyidae is the pacarana. ''Josephoartigasia'' is named after Uruguayan national hero J ...

'', prehistoric giant rodents that lived in South America several million years ago. Pacaranas typically are found in family groups of four or five.

Characteristics

Pacarana have 4 limbs and large heads. They are considered a scansorial species. When they eat, they grasp their food with their fore-paws while sitting on their hind legs.

References

External links

* * * * {{Taxonbar, from=Q284417 Hystricognath rodents Mammals of the Andes Rodents of South America Mammals of Bolivia Mammals of Brazil Mammals of Colombia Mammals of Ecuador Mammals of Peru Mammals of Venezuela Vulnerable animals Vulnerable biota of South America Mammals described in 1873 Taxa named by Wilhelm Peters