Capybaras in Flooded Grassland

Capybaras in Flooded Grassland is an original illustration set in Northern Pantanal, Brazil. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is tropical savanna — a pronounced dry season.

A capybara family wades through knee-deep floodwater at warm late afternoon. The adults have blocky heads with high-set eyes; the young follow between them. Mirror-like channels weave through vivid wet grass, with scattered fan palms and a distant strip of gallery forest. One small caiman rests far off on a mud bank.

Why are its eyes, ears and nostrils all set high on the skull?

Eyes, ears and nostrils all set high on a blocky skull is the anatomy of an animal that spends its life half-submerged. Grass this vivid standing in shallow water, with palms and a thin ribbon of forest along the channels, describes a seasonally flooded plain rather than a permanent swamp — the water arrives, spreads across almost flat ground, and drains slowly away again.

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