Chinchillas are rodents that many people are starting to become interested in. In recent years, people have started adopting chinchillas as pets due to how cute they are.
Aside from being very cute animals, chinchillas have a reputation for being quite clever. If you’re new to the idea of taking care of chinchillas, then you might not know a lot about them yet.
Are chinchillas really all that smart or are they similar to most other types of rodents? Keep reading to learn everything that you need to know about how smart chinchillas are.
Chinchillas Are Definitely Quite Smart
Chinchillas are definitely quite smart and you’ll see just how smart they are if you choose to care for one. When you interact with a chinchilla on a daily basis, you’ll come to see how responsive they are and how they can learn.
These animals can easily learn to recognize their names, the people who take care of them, and basic types of commands. You can teach them to respond to things that they want, such as treats that they enjoy.
It’s also good to know that chinchillas are smart enough to be trained to pee in litter boxes. These are intelligent rodents that are very capable of learning things when you spend the time to train them.
You’ll also enjoy how good chinchillas are when it comes to social interactions. These are incredibly loving, social creatures when you treat them right and care for them.
Chinchillas Have Great Memory Capacity
One of the reasons why chinchillas are considered to be so smart is that they have great memory capacity. You can see that chinchillas have great memory capacity when compared to other animals by looking at their ability to recognize voices and faces.
Your chinchilla will be able to recognize your face and voice very easily and will get excited when they see you. The same can be said for the other people in your household as well as anyone who interacts with the chinchilla in a positive way.
Chinchillas learn to recognize friends and they can store many faces and voices in their memory banks. The memory capabilities of a chinchilla don’t stop at just recognizing human faces and voices, though.
When you place a chinchilla in a cage, it’s going to be able to memorize its layout. They’re very good at learning about their environments quickly and adapting so that they can thrive.
You’ll find that chinchillas are very clean animals, and this means that they will want to do things as hygienically as possible. Even if you don’t train your chinchilla to use a litter box, it will likely choose a specific corner in its cage to urinate so that it doesn’t get dirty.
Chinchillas can easily learn to identify various scents and they use this information to make decisions. You can use positive reinforcement training techniques to get chinchillas to remember good behaviors that you want them to keep up.
This makes chinchillas very trainable, and they can learn tricks and behaviors more quickly than you might expect. That might be one of the best ways to showcase just how intelligent chinchillas are.
Chinchillas Can Recognize You by Your Scent
Did you know that chinchillas are able to store information about scents in their memory banks as well? Over time, your chinchilla is going to memorize your scent as well as your face.
This means that your chinchilla won’t have to see your face or hear your voice to recognize you. A chinchilla might be able to identify you by your scent, and it might get excited when it smells that you have come home from work.
It’s actually very impressive just how much information is stored in a chinchilla’s head. These animals learn a lot and they store so much more information than most people would expect a small animal to.
They recognize lots of different scents and can use this information to know how to react. Your chinchilla will learn the scents of all of its friends and will be able to tell if they’re around without getting visual confirmation.
Tricks and Commands
Chinchillas are very capable when it comes to learning new behaviors. If you’re able to use standard positive reinforcement techniques, then you can train chinchillas to do many different things.
You can teach chinchillas a variety of different tricks and commands over time. Since these animals have such high memory capacity, they’re going to be able to learn to do many different things.
Among common animals that are kept as pets, chinchillas are some of the best at learning how to do tricks and how to respond to commands. Most people who like to train chinchillas will just give them a treat when they do something good.
Chinchillas are smart enough to keep doing actions when they see a benefit from performing that action. It’s a simple concept, but it works wonders.
When you compare how well a chinchilla does against other types of rodents, it’s easy to see that chinchillas are especially intelligent. They’re capable of learning things a lot more quickly than most animals, and that puts them on another level.
You’ll be able to train a chinchilla to do tricks and listen to commands more easily than you will many other types of pets. You might even say that chinchillas are among the smartest pets that you can take care of.
It’s unclear whether chinchillas are truly smarter than dogs or cats, though. Some experts feel that chinchillas might be smarter than dogs and cats, but not everyone is in agreement.
Basically, chinchillas are very smart, and they’re a lot smarter than animals such as squirrels and rabbits. Experts will continue to study the cognitive abilities of chinchillas, and someday there might be a consensus about where it ranks on the animal intelligence chart.
What Tricks Can You Teach Chinchillas?
Chinchillas can learn a wide variety of different tricks, and this can be fun to think about. You can teach your chinchilla to play little games with you if you’d like to interact with it.
For example, some people have taught chinchillas to play fetch using little sticks or toys. You can roll a ball for a chinchilla and teach it to roll it back toward you.
One of the first things that you should teach your chinchilla to do is to come when you call its name. You want to do this first since it’ll be easier to get the chinchilla to pay attention to other things that you’re trying to teach it.
You can also do simple things such as teaching your chinchilla to climb on your shoulder. Chinchillas will often like to go for rides on their owners once they have gotten used to them.
There are even instances where people have taught chinchillas to wink on command. You can teach a chinchilla to wink every time you wink at it.
A chinchilla could learn to do little somersaults or other types of rolling tricks if you wanted to try to teach it to do that. There are so many options and you’re only limited by what a chinchilla would reasonably be able to do.
As long as you can use some type of positive reinforcement to get the chinchilla to perform a certain action, it should be possible for the chinchilla to learn it. All of the standard training methods utilize treats that will make your chinchillas want to keep performing certain actions.
You might need to play around a bit to determine which treats your chinchilla will respond to the best. It’s normal for chinchillas to have favorites, and your chinchilla might like certain things more than others.
It’s well worth taking the time to teach your chinchilla fun little tricks. They can make your time together that much more fun overall.
Chinchillas are a lot of fun to train and they respond to new commands very well. They’re smart little creatures that are very capable overall and it won’t take a herculean effort to get them to learn new tricks or commands.
The Cleanliness of Chinchillas
Many people point to the cleanliness of chinchillas as a great example of how intelligent they are. When you compare chinchillas to other types of rodents and many other types of animals, it’s easy to see that they’re different.
Chinchillas are among the cleanest animals that you could care for as a pet. They don’t like being dirty and they will do what they can to keep themselves and their environment clean.
If you place a chinchilla in a dust bath, then it will do what it needs to do to ensure that it gets clean. Also, chinchillas will naturally only pee in a specific spot in their cages so that the rest of the cage will remain sanitary.
This is really nice because it makes things easier for you as an owner. You’ll need to do your part to help clean out the cage, but chinchillas are much cleaner than many other types of rodents that people keep as pets.
They’re smart enough to have cleanliness instincts that go beyond what normal animals do. Most animals wouldn’t think twice about urinating wherever they think is convenient, but chinchillas are different.
Chinchillas and their desire to be clean stand out among most other animals. You can easily point to the cleanly nature of chinchillas as an example of how smart they are.
Chinchillas Can Learn Names
Another interesting thing to think about is that chinchillas have the capacity to learn names. When you give a chinchilla a name, it’s going to be able to remember that name pretty quickly.
Chinchillas learn to recognize their name and they will respond when you call their name. Not all animals are capable of learning names and recognizing names, but chinchillas have enough intelligence to do so.
You’ll notice that chinchillas will respond to their names in a few different ways. If you say the chinchilla’s name, then it might stop whatever it is doing and turn toward you.
Another thing that might happen is that the chinchilla might start to act excited. It might be associating hearing its name with getting to play or getting a treat of some sort.
Chinchillas might learn to recognize many other names and phrases too. They can hold a lot of information in their heads thanks to having an improved memory.
Overall, chinchillas are very impressive when it comes to remembering names and responding to words. There are few animals out there that do as well as chinchillas when it comes to remembering words and responding to them.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know more about chinchillas, it’s going to be easy to recognize just how smart they are. Chinchillas are some of the smartest animals that you will encounter, and it’s a joy to care for them as pets.
You can easily teach a chinchilla to recognize its name, and the fun isn’t going to stop there. Chinchillas will learn to recognize your face, they’ll remember the sound of your voice, and they’ll be able to store all sorts of other information.
These pets are easy to teach and you can train them to do a number of different things. Using standard positive reinforcement techniques should allow you to teach your chinchilla lots of fun games and tricks that will make your time together satisfying.
You’ll love how cleanly these animals are as well because it’ll make less work for you. They can be trained to pee in a litter box, and they’re always going to do their best to keep from getting too messy.
If you think that chinchillas are interesting and cool animals, then keeping one as a pet might be a good idea. You might get a lot out of the experience, and many people have fallen in love with caring for these wonderful little creatures.
Many even say that chinchillas have intelligence that surpasses that of dogs and cats in certain ways. If you wish to own a smart animal that can learn a lot over time, then chinchillas are a great choice.
I have a bachelor’s degree in construction engineering. When I’m not constructing or remodeling X-Ray Rooms, Cardiovascular Labs, and Pharmacies, I’m at home with my wife, two daughters and a dog. Outside of family, I love grilling and barbequing on my Big Green Egg and working on projects around the house. Growing up, I had pet dogs, cats, deer, sugar gliders, chinchillas, a bird, chickens, fish, and a goat.