Travelling To Chile To Meet The Guiña!
- smallwildcatrg
- Jun 8
- 3 min read
Thanks to SWCRG committee member Ricky Reino for this blog post.
Recently I travelled to southern Chile, for a once in a lifetime opportunity to spend time working with guiña. The guiña (pronounced ween-ya) is often referred to as the KodKod, and is the smallest wild cat in South America, with males weighing on average 3kg, and females 2kg. They are found in the temperate forests of central and southern Chile and have recently been classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and Moderately Depleted on the IUCN Green Status of Species. Key threats are habitat loss, retaliatory killings from chicken farmers and being killed by domestic dogs.
Fauna Andina is a small reserve that is working towards the conservation of native wildlife through the restoration of natural forest. They are home to the only captive guiñas in the world, with their cats coming from various backgrounds, and are often unable to be released into the wild.
After an almost 24 hour journey from home in London I arrived at the centre and was talked through the work that had been achieved over the past 26 years, not just with guiña, but with other native wildlife, such as puma and pudu.
The focus of my stay was to learn about the care required for guiña and observe any unique behaviours. These being the only captive guiña, which made this trip even more special.
The enclosures were set in the forest, encompassing trees, brush, and everything that a small cat would need to feel comfortable and secure. Elevated nest boxes, for shelter, had also been added to each. In the time that I was there I saw the various individuals dividing their time almost equally between being at floor level and being up in the trees. When climbing down the tree branches they don’t turn their ankles, like some other cats do, but almost hold on and slides down, foot by foot.
There have been several kittens born at the centre over the years, some going on to be released into the surrounding forests. The centre team shared that any matings have always been observed up in the trees rather than at ground level and interestingly there were no births until small ponds were added to the enclosures. This was due an an observation made by the founder of Fauna Andina, as he had always found conflict or road killed animals close to water sources.
Like most small cats, the guiña were generally shy, but definitely showed their individual characters, and confidence at feeding time. The centre feeds them once daily, however, we spoke about the differences in feeding management for different cat species, and so the idea of feeding the cats twice daily due to their size, was discussed.
As well as discussing diet and other management techniques for captive wild cats globally, what I was keen to explore was how the cats would react to enrichment, having not been given any before. The team were interested in the concept, so after setting up a camera trap in one of the enclosures, we sprayed a small, plain cardboard box with some perfume and left it for a group of three cats (mother and daughters) to investigate. On reviewing footage the next evening the camera had recorded the mother cautiously investigating the box and then kittens proceeding to rub on and play with the box. This then resulted in lots of play behaviours between the group.
The centre team, and I were delighted at the recorded footage, and we talked more about simple enrichment ideas to keep the animals at the centre, further stimulated. It is noteworthy however to say that in the time I was there I didn’t see any signs of stress, boredom or stereotyping from any of the cats. They have a calm and quiet environment and quite clearly enjoy the ‘simple life’.
All too soon it was time to make the journey home, but, my trip had been insightful, educational and inspiring, showing that there are many small conservation centres that are doing big things to play their part to protect their native species.
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