I got to pet a Capybara yesterday!!!

Jaxia@toast.ooo to aww@lemmy.world – 391 points –

It was awesome! One even rolled over on its side to get belly rubs. Definitely would recommend for any animal lovers. :)

https://www.gatorland.com/animals/meet-a-capybara/

Link for anyone interested.

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Not my pic, but this is in my city, Curitiba:

I used to visit that specific park (Parque Barigüi) fairly often, as I worked nearby. For me the fun part wasn't even interacting with the capybaras, but watching tourists interacting with them. Not recommended - unlike the ones in the OP, these here are wild and might have ticks, but... well, neither tourists nor capybaras give a fuck.

Just make sure that you don't go full "squeee" and chase them, they'll simply get into the water and you'll be sad. A girl whom I used to date did this.

I would risk a tick to hug a capybara

It's actually quite risky. Some people died last month in Brazil because of the disease that's is transmitted by these ticks (Rocky Mountain spotted fever if I got it right from google, febre maculosa in Portuguese).

While you might die from having hugged a tick infested Capybara, have you honestly truly lived until you did so?

Ticks can carry deadly diseases where I live too, and we've got a lot of them.

With a decent tick repellant for myself and pets, I can't recall the last time I had one on me.

I remember news about that. It was in Campinas - there was a huge capybara population boom.

That city is in a specially bad spot for this sort of disease because it's heavily populated like Curitiba, but unlike Curitiba it has a huge rural area. Like, you walk in Barão Geraldo neighbourhood and it's booming, then you walk a bit more and suddenly you're in the middle of nowhere. The odds of infecting livestock that infects people are fairly high, and with the demographic density in Campinas proper you get it from person to person.

Still better to do what the OP did though. If you want to hug the oversized rodents, make sure that there's people taking care of them, and ensuring that they're OK.

Yep, that's the one, I think there were even more cases like last week or something.

Still better to do what the OP did though. If you want to hug the oversized rodents, make sure that there’s people taking care of them, and ensuring that they’re OK.

Yeah, 100%. Being taken care they seem to be super chill and safe to interact with.