Mountain Paca

Open encyclopedia reference

The mountain paca (Cuniculus taczanowskii) is a small burrow-dwelling rodent whose habitats are high altitude South American forests. Pacas are nocturnal, sedentary, and solitary animals with territorial tendencies. It eats mostly fruits and seeds. The mountain paca primarily inhabits higher Andean montane forest regions in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. This paca has coarse fur without underfur, dark brown to black on the upper body and white or yellowish on the underbelly. It usually has three to five rows of white spots along its sides, against a dark grey background. It has thick strong legs, with four digits in the forefeet and five in the hind feet (the first and fifth are reduced); the nails function as hooves. The tail is short and hairless. The zygomatic arch is expanded laterally and dorsally and is used as a resonating chamber—a unique feature among mammals. The mountain paca is hunted for its meat, which is high in calories and is considered a delicacy particularly in rural communities.

Wikipedia contributors, Mountain paca; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T03:07:19.471692+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.

Identity & source status

Scientific name

Cuniculus taczanowskii (Stolzmann, 1865)

Name authority

(Stolzmann, 1865)

Common name

Mountain Paca

Rank

species

Accepted status

accepted

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Mammalia

Order

Rodentia

Family

Cuniculidae

Genus

Cuniculus

Extinction status

Recorded extant

Classification family tree

Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.

1. domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
2. kingdomAnimalia
3. phylumChordata
4. subphylumVertebrata
5. infraphylumGnathostomata
6. parvphylumOsteichthyes
7. megaclassTetrapoda
8. classMammalia Linnaeus, 1758
9. subclassTheria Parker & Haswell, 1897
10. infraclassEutheria Gill, 1872
11. orderRodentia Bowdich, 1821
12. suborderHystricomorpha Brandt, 1855
13. infraorderHystricognathi Brandt, 1855
14. familyCuniculidae Miller & Gidley, 1918
15. genusCuniculus Brisson, 1762
16. speciesCuniculus taczanowskii (Stolzmann, 1865)

Close classified relatives

No other member of this genus is present in the selected snapshot.

Browse 1 records assigned to Cuniculidae.

Names & synonyms

Names explicitly linked to this accepted taxon in the source. Synonymy can change with revision.

Documented distribution

Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.

Source literature & publication evidence

References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.

1. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=825308 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references

Origins, evidence & remaining research

Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.

Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record.

Dataset citation & attribution

This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11

Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.

Stable key: col:6BQ98. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.