viscachas

Noun

viscacha (plural viscachas)

1. Any of the several South American rodents, native to the Andes Mountains, of the genera Lagidium and Lagostomus.
   • From the tenderness of its covering, it is not, though a stronger and larger animal, so able to bear the severity of winter in the Andes as the Chinchilla, though it is not so decidedly an animal of the plains as the viscacha of Paraguay.1836, Charles Frederick Partington, “Chinchillidae”, in The British Cyclopæedia of Natural History, page 27

   Synonyms:

   chinchillon