Recently, a tourist photographed two capybaras fighting in Beijing's Daxing Wildlife Park, scuffling with each other, and the scene was very fierce for a while.
* After the outflow, netizens said that the "personality" of the capybara collapsed, and the mood was stableWhat about a good Buddhist life?
Don't worry, today I will take you into the "mental state" of the capybara.
Spiritual solace for the Japanese people.
Capybara is native to South America and is the world's largest rodent, weighing more than 100 pounds.
In the 60s of the last century, Japanese scientists came to South America and found that the capybara was docile and easy to raise, and it was still white and fat, and there was a lot of meat, so the capybara was brought to Japan, ready to be fed as a domestic animal.
During the research to verify whether the capybara could be a qualified domestic animal, the Japanese also exhibited the capybara in the zoo, and since it is an animal from the Americas, most Japanese people have never seen it, so many people come to the zoo to see it.
Unexpectedly, after the exhibition, the capybara, an animal with a big nose, small eyes, and small ears, showed a state of wantlessness, and enjoyed the sense of relaxation that many people could only hope for, which made many Japanese people who were not in a good state of mind seem to be hit at once.
The reason for this may be that Japanese people are serious and follow the rules of work, and their daily lives are too tight, so when they see capybara, they see this state of life as a spiritual comfort.
Since then, Japanese zoos have been deeply tied to capybaras, and many zoos have kept capybaras, so much so that many people still think that capybaras come from Japan, but it has to be said that capybaras are loved by the Japanese people for their "happy, natural, and relaxed lifestyle", and they have also escaped the fate of becoming food.
Soaking in the hot springs, so comfortable.
When it comes to capybara, many people probably think of this scene first.
Many capybaras lie on their stomachs in the hot springs, leaving only their nostrils, eyes and ears exposed above the water, and there are many grapefruit floating next to them, and many Japanese people have said, "Isn't this the state I was in when I was soaking in the hot springs?"
Interestingly, the capybara bath in the hot springs actually originated from a serendipitous discovery. In 1982, a keeper at Izu Cactus Park in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, was cleaning a capybara farm with hot water when he noticed a group of capybaras gathered around a small hot pool, and proposed to the park to prepare a hot spring for capybaras in winter.
In this way, the wonderful combination of capybara + hot spring made the capybara further explosive out of the circle.
The capybara soaked in the hot springs seems to have forgotten all their worries and is left to enjoy the moment. Capybaras can now be seen soaking in hot springs at zoos all over Japan, and even in 2017, zoos prepared a hot spring competition for capybaras to see which capybara could stay in the hot springs longer.
However, is it true that capybaras really like to soak in this hot spring, or do Japanese people like to soak in the hot springs?
With this question in mind, Japanese scientists also conducted research, and their research results were published in the journal Nature.
As mentioned above, the capybara comes from South America, where the climate is high temperature and high humidity, and after arriving in Japan, the temperature and humidity are obviously not as suitable as in the hometown, but the summer is fine, with sunshine and rainfall, so the back of the capybara in summer is reddish and black, and the surface is clean and smooth.
But in winter, not only is the temperature in Japan low, but the air is also relatively dry, so many capybaras will become rough and dry in winter, and even scab over.
From this point of view, the researchers evaluated whether the roughness** of the capybara in the winter was alleviated after continuous bathing in the hot springs.
After a month-long experiment, it was found that the capybara bathing in the hot springs, after three weeks, the original rough, scaly ** gradually became smooth, the skin color of ** was close to the red and black in summer, and the hair of the capybara became more shiny, indicating that the capybara really likes to soak in hot springs.
And this study also found an interesting pattern, when soaking in the hot springs, when the eyes of the capybara are smaller and smaller, the ears are leaning back, indicating that the hot spring is more comfortable at this time, and the next time you go to see the capybara hot spring, you can pay attention to it.
Emotionally stable, but not all the time.
Capybara is a social animal, and its group composition is composed of more females and a small number of males, which belongs to a relatively closed and relatively stable social unit. Individuals living in the same group can usually live together for several years, so within the group, everyone is very leisurely, except for eating and sleeping, just touching fish and basking in the sun, almost no quarrel with the world, and the mood is very stable.
Capybaras living in the same group will help each other, such as grooming each other, which helps to strengthen social bonds between groups, and when a cub is born in the group, all the females will take care of it, this behavior is also known as "public care".
Not only is it stable internally, but it also releases emotional value externally, and you can become friends with many animals, and even if you are "ridden" on the head, you will not get angry.
These signs also make the capybara's "approachable and emotionally stable" character deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
However, as a social animal, capybaras cannot always be emotionally stable, and even Sun Wukong, who jumped out of a crack in the stone, eventually learned to be tactful.
In capybara groups, there is a clear characteristic: there is a strict hierarchical distinction between males, usually the male with a larger body and larger nose dominates, and the other males are subordinate.
Therefore, the mating system of the capybara is polygamous, from the perspective of fantasy, the dominant male can have all the females in the group, but the reality is not the case, although the dominant male does have more mating rights, but the subordinate male can also get the opportunity to mate, after all, there is only one "big brother", and there are many younger brothers.
Of course, the "big brother" definitely doesn't want this kind of thing to happen, because the capybara courtship is still relatively long, so the "big brother" has time to interrupt the courtship and then drive the younger brother away. This is also a big reason why there are fights within capybara groups.
In addition, there will be some social interaction between capybaras, don't think that they are at the extreme, like other social rodents, individuals will chase and scuffle with each other.
At this point, we can know that capybaras are emotionally stable most of the time, but their lives are not always Buddhist, at least when it comes to fertility and play, they are relatively active.
Author: Yu Yu.
Winner of the Silver Award for Outstanding Popular Science Works of the China Science Writers Association.
Lovers of steamed fish heads, spicy fish heads, and other fish heads.
Editor-in-charge: Dong Xiaoxian.