When there's lots of food, an agouti buries the extra portions around its territory for future meals. Its sensitive ears can even hear when the fruit hits the ground! The agouti often eats upright, holding its food with the front feet, just like a squirrel. Fallen fruit is the agouti's favorite food, with nuts a close second. More amazingly, this rodent can jump up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) straight up in the air from a standing position, spin around, land, and dash off in the opposite direction!įeasting, forgetting, and farming. To make an escape, an agouti can run pretty quickly. Sharp hearing and a keen sense of smell help the agouti prepare when a predator is near: it may freeze, make an alarm call, stamp its feet, or raise the long hairs on its rump to scare the enemy away. At rest, the agouti stays in a burrow or hollow tree trunk, safe from predators such as coatimundis, jaguars, and ocelots. What'cha doin'? Much of this rodent's time is spent searching for food or taking a dip in a pool of water. Brazil nuts may be hard for us to crack, but they pose no problem for agoutis! This sturdy rodent is the only animal that can crack open the hard outer shell of a Brazil nut.The sharp incisors keep growing throughout their lifetime, ensuring that they always have nut-cracking tools at the ready. Agoutis use their molars to grind food items. The layers of enamel on their teeth are twisted in a way that makes them much stronger. These are the teeth they use to chew through tough items like nutshells. It walks on its toes, not flat-footed like many rodents, giving the agouti a dainty look.Īlthough it is hard to see it, the agouti does have a tail: it is very small, looking like a dark jelly bean stuck on the rump!Īre you nuts? Just like other rodents, agoutis have teeth designed to gnaw on very hard items, with one pair of sharp incisors in the front of the mouth. The agouti has five toes on its front feet and three on the hind feet. Its coarse hair is covered with an oily (and stinky!) substance that acts like a raincoat. The agouti (ah GOO tee) is a rodent from Central and South America rainforests that looks a bit like a really large guinea pig.
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