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As far as what I’m going to call ‘capybara scientists’ are aware, the world’s biggest rodent has been knocking around for something like nine million years, which is approximately 30 times longer than homo sapiens.
What have capybaras been up to all this while? Just sort of hanging out really, grazing away on the vegetation of Latin America, biding their time until they became the world’s biggest rodent (the cow-sized previous holder of the title was the Uruguayan josephoartigasia, which went extinct a couple of million years ago). Despite their age as a species, and their freakish, almost anachronistic bigness – they are twice as big as the runner-up rodent, the North American beaver – capybaras seem to have basically just gotten on with it. Their survival as a species has been aided by a combination of skittishness and massive teeth, plus the fact that if a predator comes along a herd’s default response is to run into the nearest body of water and simply sit at the bottom of it until the predator gives up (they’re able to hold their breath for around five minutes, which is apparently more than the average leopard’s attention span).
Weirdly, and despite the fundamentally unchanging nature of the species, capybaras are having a bit of a cultural moment right now. It’s quite hard to pinpoint why, but it’s definitely got a lot to do with the internet, and may or may not have been sparked by the class warfare-related memes that resulted from an incident in 2021 where a huge number of the creatures invaded a fancy Argentinian gated community. In any case, 2024 ended with both the New York Times and New Yorker publishing ecstatic articles about the beasts, at least partly spurred on by a baby capybara named Tupi. Born in a Texas zoo last December, he became a viral sensation, and for whatever reason (nothing to do with the zoo, apparently) had a meme coin named after him.
So when Hobbledown Heath – a new-ish farm park in Hounslow – announced that it would be the first place in London* to offer a feed-the-capybaras experience and asked if somebody would like to come down and try it out, I aggressively leveraged the fact I have primary school age children to shut out all of my colleagues.
I’ve always been fond of capybaras. As a child, my local ‘zoo’ – the Birmingham Nature Centre – maintained a small herd, and their combination of prodigious size and refusal to be even remotely phased by the West Midlands weather meant that they were often the only decent animal on full display. And despite being an affable, reliable fixture of a mid-tier Brummie zoo, they always seemed distant and exotic. There may be millions of these meme-ably stoic creatures wandering around South America in great herds, but it’s quite hard as a Westerner to imagine them just being around, living their lives.
They were a dream, munching vegetables with a contemplative dignity
Well, I can confirm that an afternoon at Hobbledown left me and my children feeling considerably better acquainted. There are five capybaras in the venue’s petting zoo, divided into two groups, because they hate each other, or at least don’t get on that well at present. We were in with Churro and Taquito, the latter of whom was looking a bit threadbare on top after the former had recently gone to town on him with his enormous teeth (fortunately they have extremely tough skin. This is probably making them sound like nutters, but for the duration of our visit, they proved to be extremely polite, albeit somewhat nervous creatures.
Our accompanying zookeeper gave us some big pads to kneel on, so we looked less menacing when they slinked out of their shelter to be hand-fed a big bucket of vegetables (when I slowly backed away to take some shots from a distance the pair temporarily retreated, suspicious I might be planning to encircle them). And aside from a shameful aversion to broccoli, they were a dream, munching through vegetables with a slow, contemplative dignity that reached its apotheosis when Churro seemed to puff up to an even larger size.
We were informed this meant he was happy, and we should give him a good scratch - we did, and it was a wonderful moment. I don’t want to understate the magic of pleasing, say, a dog, but it’s pretty easy to please a dog. Pleasing a capybara, though, feels like an accomplishment, an achievement, the end of a hero’s journey. Yes, it’s hard to shake the sense that their newfound meme friendliness has increased the cache of the experience. But delighting one of these creatures when you could easily have lived your entire life not delighting one of these creatures is just intrinsically gratifying.
Although I was very much letting my kids take the lead, the experience is open to anyone aged six and above, which most certainly includes adults (bar a few T&Cs). And indeed, when I posted a picture on my Insta, a flurry** of childless friends eagerly pressed me for where this was.
At £60 a go, a 20-minute capybara encounter is hardly cheap, even if it’s inclusive of general admission to Hobbledown’s sprawling indoor and outdoor play areas. But for a genuinely one-off, bucket list experience I think… well why not? There are far, far stupider things to spend your money on in London.
It was a horribly cold, wet January day when we visited Hobbledown. On the news, the President of the United States was threatening to do mad, horrible things to pretty much everyone. But when Churro the capybara puffed up in happiness, everything seemed briefly alright with the world.
*Zone 5 is still London
**three
Fancy your own animal encounter? These are the best zoos in and around London
Don’t want to travel to Zone 5? Here are London’s best city farms