It burrows under houses, and is very destructive to plants, fruit and even poultry.
In their native haunts they are extremely timid and wary, and very difficult to approach, being rarely seen out of their burrows in the daytime.
Chinchillas live in burrows, and these subterranean dwellings undermine the ground in some parts of the Chilean Andes to such an extent as to cause danger to travellers on horseback.
The young, of which seldom more than one is produced at a birth, remain in the burrows for several months.
They are devoted sun-worshippers and in the early morning, before it is daylight, they emerge from their burrows and wait in rows till their divinity appears; when they bask joyfully in his beams."