Chinchillas are fantastic creatures. Learn about them in this awesome course!

Chinchillas are rodents that are native to the Andes Mountains of northern Chile. Often kept as pets, chinchillas are also prized for their luxuriously soft fur and were nearly driven to extinction because of the demand. Chinchilla fur was originally mottled yellow-gray in the wild, according to The Merck Veterinary Manual. Through selective breeding, however, other colors have become common, including silver, yellow-gray, bluish-gray, white, beige and black. Each hair ends in a black tip, no matter what color the chinchillas are.

First appearing around 41 million years ago, the chinchilla's ancestors were some of the first rodents to infest South America. Chinchilla fur became popular in the 1700s, and the animals were hunted nearly to extinction by 1900. About that time, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru banned the hunting of wild chinchillas.