Back in my petsmart days when I was crazy about pets I thought a lot about exotic animals. I went as far as buying a semi-exotic one… the dreaded Chinchilla. What I learned from that chinchilla is that there’s a reason that most people don’t own them. They’re cute and fluffy and make great pets for other people, but they’re pains in the ass. They chew up anything within 2 feet of the cage and can somehow escape when one bar of their cage is welded a sixteenth of an inch off. But they’re fluffy, so that’s supposed to make up for it all.

I still love guinea pigs and will recommend them to any family looking to get a pet for the kids. They’re like the fish of rodents. If you get a big enough cage and lots of food they’re really easy to take care of. When I had them I was looking for the next cool pet and I found out that in South America there are guinea pig like rodents that can be 3 feet tall and weigh over 100 lbs. It seems to me that you would pretty much have to turn your house into a giant cage to keep them as pets. On top of that I’d never seen them outside of a zoo. Until now!

I just found an article about a couple that keeps one in Texas. They even have a blog dedicated to it and plenty of great pictures. They seem like pretty awesome people and the pet “Caplin Rous” seems well behaved and freindly. If I ever get a house with a fenced in yard I’ll have to have this discussion with Laurel and keeping the worlds largest rodent as a pet.

article – Life with a 100lb rodent
Capybara Madness