Gordon Ray Weaver, age 12, of Scottsville, Kentucky, for his question:

Where did the chinchilla originate?

Chinchillas are natives of South America, where most of the wild varieties still live high among the snowcapped peaks of the Andes. One species is found down on the pampas plains of Argentina. But the majority enjoy life on the lofty Andean slopes of Peru, northern Bolivia and southern Chile. There these small rodents forage for roots, seeds and scrawny bark. Their thick silky fur coats were, no doubt, designed to cope with a cold climate at high altitudes.

In the 1500s, Spanish explorers named them for the Chincha Indians    who dined on the little animals and used their fur to make robes. The Spanish sent chinchilla fur to Europe, where it became so popular that the little beauties were almost wiped out. For a while the outside world forgot about them. Then in 1923, 11 chinchillas were captured in Chile and brought to the United States. It is thought that most of those now living in thousands of American chinchilla ranches are descendants of those 11 Chilean ancestors.