Lowland Paca Skull Replica

Description

Lowland Paca Skull Replica measures 5.2 inches. Lowland Paca Skull Replica is museum quality polyurethane cast. 2-part skull (separate cranium and jaw). Made in USA. Our precise skull can be used as a teaching tool, museum skull exhibit, home décor skull, or office décor skull.

A Paca or Cuniculus paca (from Tupí paka) is a member of the genus Cuniculus of ground-dwelling, herbivorous rodents in South and Central America. It is the only genus in the family Cuniculidae. Pacas are large rodents with dots and stripes on their sides, short ears, and barely visible tails.

Pacas are eaten by people in Belize, where they are known as “gibnut” and, having been served to Queen Elizabeth II, “the royal rat”. In the Amazon basin they are known as “majás”. In Guyanese English, it is known as labba from Arawak.

Pacas originated in South America and are one of the few mammal species that successfully emigrated to North America after the Great American Interchange 3 million years ago. They were formerly grouped with the agoutis in the family Dasyproctidae, subfamily Agoutinae, but were given full family status because they differ in the number of toes, the shape of the skull, and coat patterning.

Pacas are 20–30 in. in length, excluding the 5–9 in. short tail, weigh 13–31 lb., and are the sixth-largest rodents in the world. Similar to guinea pigs, they have square heads, small ears, sides patterned with spots and stripes, and virtually invisible tails.

With large hind limbs, small fore limbs, and cone-shaped bodies, pacas are similar in appearance to the deer-like, ungulate chevrotains, and like them have four to seven horizontal lines of blotches and stripes along their flanks.

They have a heavy and robust appearance, though their legs are long and relatively tiny. Their small ears are set high on their heads. They have four toes on their fore feet and five on their hind feet (of which two are short and hardly touch the ground) and they have stout nails that resemble small hooves.

Young pacas skin is covered with horny scales about 0.079 in. in diameter; perhaps these scales have a protective function against smaller predators. There is virtually no difference between sexes. They can live up to 13 years in the wild.

Pacas inhabit rainforests, cloud forests, and sometimes more open habitats. They are great swimmers and prefer to be near water. They dive when threatened and can stay submerged up to 15 minutes. They can also jump up to 3 ft. 3 in. and freeze for up to 45 minutes. They normally move along well-established paths and will create new paths when old ones are disturbed.

They are normally passive in daytime and forage in the morning and afternoon, but can be strictly nocturnal in areas with many predators. They live in burrows up to 10 ft. deep, normally with two entrances covered with leaves to hide the burrow and to serve as an early warning system. Burrows are often near water, but always above the seasonal flood line. Predators except humans include jaguar, puma, ocelot, margay, jaguarundi, bush dog, boa constrictor, and caiman.

Pacas have resonating chambers in their cheeks and their growling noise is surprisingly loud for their size. Aside from making noises, territories are marked with urine. Population density can reach up to 70 adults per 49 acres, and pacas often constitute some 20% of the biomass of terrestrial mammals.

In the wild, pacas eat fruits from understory trees and fallen fruits from taller trees, but may also eat leaves, buds, flowers, fungi, and insects. They play a vital role in seed dispersal, and, with seasonal adaptations, their home ranges are often centered on a group of fruit trees. Pacas normally do not use their fore-paws to manipulate fruits (as do agoutis), instead using their powerful jaw muscles to break open hard-shelled fruits.

Unlike agoutis, pacas can store fat, and so are less dependent on the caching of seeds. Competition from agoutis is avoided by a slight variation in activity cycles and food preferences. Like rabbits, pacas are coprophagous and absorb protein and carbohydrates from specially produced moist fecal pellets.

Gestation lasts between 114 and 119 days with about 190 days between births. Pacas are precocial, the young are born with fur and open eyes. Normally, mothers give birth to one young, but she can give birth up to three times per year if conditions allow. More than one birth per year results in lactation periods overlapping pregnancies.
At 23–25 oz. at birth, the young are born in holes too small for both predators and the mother to enter, which are then covered with leaves and twigs. To invite the young out of the hole, the mother uses a low rolling vocalization.

Before allowing their young to suckle, mothers lick them to stimulate them to defecate and urinate, and then lick the resulting product, both to feed herself and to prevent the odor from attracting predators. Weaning begins after six weeks, but the young start to follow their mothers early and can do so for up to a year. Suckling usually lasts for 90 days, after which the young weighs 8.8 lb.

Lowland Paca Facts:
Conservation Status: Least Concern
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Infraorder: Hystricognathi
Parvorder: Caviomorpha
Superfamily: Cavioidea
Family: Cuniculidae
Miller & Gidley, 1918
Genus: Cuniculus
Binomial name: Cuniculus paca

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