Darwin the mousy chinchilla

Carrots are nice and healthy

Chewing toilet rolls is Darwin's favorite hobby

Darwin, my first Chinchilla, got his name for my passion for biology and therefore for one of the most renowned biologist, namely Charles Darwin from England. Darwin is also the name of the core operating system of Apple called Mac OS X which runs on all these fancy Apple computers and even on the iPhone. As I am also very fond of Apple and IT in general, Darwin was just a perfect name for my very first chinchilla.
 
Darwin is shy and doesn't like it to be touched or cuddled, he will just run away from your hand and if you get to touch him by chance he will immediately clean his fur as a protesting act against the human being. So trying to catch him can be quite tricky sometimes, even with a raisin it won't be easy to distract him while getting a hand on him. This is why I decided to give him the mousy chinchilla surname. He is maybe shy but still he is very curious and if there is someone he doesn't know well approaching his cage he will come and have a look who's there (it could be that this stranger has a nice goody for me right?). So he will come and have a sniff at you but he still won't let you touch him.
 
I've fetched him in summer 2006, more exactly on the September the 6th, from a hobby chinchilla breeder in canton Solothurn, which has a sort of farm on the country side with lot's of different animals around. Luckily I got a certificate with him and know exactly his date of birth, that's quite rare that people do that or even remember. So Darwin is born on the 25th of February 2006 and as you may guessed it, he is a male. He also has 2 siblings and his parents are called Sirah and Sharon. Darwin is a standard chinchilla, which is actually grey. This is the most common color for a chinchilla but some of them have white fur on their belly but Darwin doesn't, he has dark gray coat over his whole body. His father is dark grey too but his mother normal gray.
 
Until Darwin reached his adult age, he enjoyed very much eating fresh carrots. Nowadays he doesn't care so much about them. He prefers dry food such as his pellets or dry chinchilla biscuits and will just go mad for some raisins. Darwin has his residence in the same cage as Flöckli and Jini, both of them are female chinchillas so this is fine. The opposite: two males and one female chinchilla is a bad combination as they would fight often. Darwin is already a proud father of four baby chinchillas, two in 2007 and two this year. He gave birth to standard chinchillas, as the mother, Jini, also is a standard chinchilla.