This week: The plight of the chinchilla
We see quite a lot of exotic animals at the clinic compared with 10 years ago. The market for exotics has steadily grown to the point where on some days, 50 per cent of our patients are exotic animals. These include rabbits, turtles, hamsters, birds, fish, lizards, snakes and, last but not least, chinchillas.
It was in Hong Kong, of all places, that I saw my first chinchilla. It is native to the Chilean Andes, so it was surprising to find them in humid Hong Kong. They are banned in Australia, so we weren't taught much about them at vet school there.
Ten years ago, chinchillas were still fairly rare in Hong Kong, but they were made famous by a notable Japanese cartoon that characterised them as cute. After that, their popularity progressively increased and we vets were suddenly seeing more of them, so I had to learn more about them to be able to treat them effectively.
I was surprised to find out about their turbulent and tragic history. As usual in the animal kingdom, their tragedy had a decidedly human element. Their story starts back before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, in a little-known aboriginal culture called the Chincha. The Chincha prized the chinchilla both as a food source and for their luxurious fur. The Chincha were conquered by the Inca empire and the chinchilla was one of the spoils of war. Chinchilla fur was used extensively and exclusively by the Inca royalty. The pelts were used to decorate the royal chambers and worn during ceremonies.
The Spaniards then conquered and annihilated the Inca empire and the chinchilla arrived in Europe, where fur was already a popular commodity. North America had the beaver fur trade, and other furry mammals were hunted to extinction. In the southern continent, the Spaniards named the 'chinchilla' and soon robes of it donned the royalty of Europe. The general populace took to the chinchilla in the 1700s and by the 1800s and 1900s, the animals were being trapped in massive numbers in South America and exported to Europe.
To slow down the alarming decline in chinchilla numbers, the South American authorities introduced tariffs on all fur exports and, when these failed to slow the slaughter, a ban was finally imposed on the killing and trapping of wild chinchillas, with captive breeding introduced to supply the fur trade.