Douglas Casmus, age 9, of Montgomery, Ala
What is a coypu?
The Spanish settlers of the New World named this fellow the nutria from their own word for otter. Maybe you have seen a coat or collar made of nutria and run your fingers through the soft and silky fur. Surely, you would think, this lovely fur came from a pretty little animal. Nutria comes from an animal called the cpypu. He looks like a raggedy, overgrown rat, his face and toothy jaws would scare you into running far, far away from him.
The coypu is a native of South America where he makes his home along the muddy streams and soggy marshes. He is a bunny‑sized rodent about two feet long. A rodent animal, of course, has special gnawing teeth, which keep growing longer all his life. As he uses them to gnaw his food, he wears away the tips and in this way keeps them filed down to reasonable size. Our rats, mice and squirrels are rodent cousins of the water‑loving coypu.
The furry coat of the coypu is suitable for a life in and out of the water. Actually it is two coats in one. Some of the fur is soft and silky and it forms a dense layer next to the skin. But a number of long, coarse hairs grow among the soft short hairs. They are the guard hairs that poke above the undercoat. When you see a live coypu, you see only his shaggy overcoat.
When he goes into the water, which is very often, the shaggy guard hairs keep him dry. They cling together in tapering tufts and the water runs down and ripples off the pointed tips. Very little, if any, of the water reaches his short, silky undercoat and the coypu never gets soaked to the skin. When his coat is used in the fur trade, the guard hairs are clipped down or pulled out by the roots.
The undercoat is the silky fur called nutria.
He may look fearsome, but the coypu is a gentle animal who does not hunt even meat for a living. He usually feeds on a diet of water weeds, but if he is short of these groceries, he may go look for a salad of land plants. In many places, he raids the farmers crops and becomes a pest.
In his native home in South America, the coypu finds all he needs to make life pleasant in the marshy waterways. His back feet are webbed, swimming is easy, the waters are clogged with delicious food, the muddy banks suitable for sun bathing and digging cozy burrows. Mrs. Coypu is a devoted mother and educates her furry family with loving care. You may catch a glimpse of her swimming through the water with her babies clutched to her shaggy back.
Fur traders thought that the coypu would make his home in less faraway swamplands and he was taken to live in other countries around the world. The little fellow indeed did make himself at home. He multiplied at a great rate, devoured all the water weeds and soon raided the nearby crops. In New Jersey, Louisiana and in England, these imported coypus have become a great nuisance and the farmers wish that the fur‑bearing nutria had been left at home.