12 Adorable Characteristics That Will Make You Fall in Love with Capybaras - #7 Is Absolutely Heart-Melting!
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6. Natural-Born Grazers
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Herbivores with a great taste for plant stuff are capybaras. Maintaining the biological balance of their ecosystems depends critically on their grazing activity. Nature's lawnmowers, these gentle giants may eat up to 8% of their body weight in grass per day. Like cows, their unusual digestive mechanism helps them to maximise the nutrients from hardy, fibrous vegetation. Capybaras have especially evolved teeth that develop constantly throughout their lifetime, allowing them to chew through difficult plants without wearing down their dental tools. Apart from maintaining the capybaras, this continuous grazing behaviour controls vegetation development in their habitats, therefore preventing overgrowth and fostering biodiversity. Fascinatingly, in some agricultural environments where they help to maintain pastures and limit weed development, their grazing patterns have made them surprising allies. Their selective eating behaviours even assist distribute seeds, therefore promoting plant variety in their environments. Not only is it lovely to see a group of capybaras gently grazing together, but it also attests to their vital ecological function. Their effective grazing behaviour and how it benefits their surroundings provide still another level of attraction to the capybara by highlighting how these cute animals greatly help their habitats.