Springing from South America Chinchillas are a kind of rodent, in the wild they can be expected to live up to 15 years while in captivity their lifespan can stretch to 20 years. They are most well known thanks to their gorgeous thick coats.

Thanks to their wonderful thick coats, chinchillas have been hunted over the years and utilized to make expensive furs, it will take up to 100 chinchillas to make a lone coat, and this led to the chinchillas coming close to extinction by the beginning of the 1900. With their numbers dwindling 11 chinchillas were captured and sent to the United States, although one died in transit another was born which meant 11 chinchillas eventually found themselves in the US. These days many US citizens keep chinchillas as pets and remarkably each of them can be traced back to the original 11 that made the trip in the 1900's.

A lot of chinchillas will show affection towards their owner, sadly this is not always the case and you are unable to change their temperament in any way, so how ever a chinchilla acts when you first have them, is how they will act in the future. However that said, when you first carry one home it will doubtless be shy but this doesn't mean it will always keep its distance from you. They are also clever animals and their intelligence can lead them to be curious and mischievous, they are also very sociable animals.

Being nocturnal animal's means that the nighttime is when they are most active, during the day they will sleep so anybody who keeps chinchillas should make an effort to guard them from unwanted noise during the day. Chinchillas do not usually enjoy being held or cuddled, however as time goes on if you treat your chinchilla well it should start to approach you and even allow you to hold it or give it a stroke, do not take advantage of a chinchilla if it allows you to hold it, make sure you keep it close to your body and support it with both hands because they do not enjoy being held so doing so in a blasé fashion will only support its dislike of such things. With this in mind it is obvious that chinchillas will rarely be the perfect pet for children, most children want to play and cuddle their pets while a chinchilla will not enjoy this, they are also terrible pets for anybody with allergies because of their fur.

Although chinchillas are able to make sounds such as squeaks and the occasional odd bark, for the most part any noise originating from a chinchilla in a cage will be chewing or running on a wheel. As with all rodents the chinchilla is required to chew continually to stop its teeth from growing too long, with this in mind you should provide your chinchillas with something to chew on instead of merely leaving them to chew on their water bowl or tube, or their cage and food bowl. They will also like to move things around their cages.

If you have enough time to properly care for your chinchilla it can make a perfect pet, they feel lovely to hold thanks to their thick fur and can be taken care of with very little trouble, just make sure you learn chinchilla facts and can carry out the appropriate chinchilla care.