Strange animal sighted in the Aiken area

He may not be in his natural home, but don't cry for this Argentinian, as he seems to be thriving.

The unlikely animal was photographed Wednesday and is thousands of miles away from its South American home.

The Patagonian hare, also known as a cavy or mara, was spotted around the outskirts of the Savannah River Site. But this is not the first sighting. Five years ago, a very similar animal was spotted in the area.

"We saw it in North Augusta on our way... back towards Evans," said Lori Smith, who spotted the animal with her family Wednesday. "There was just one, running down the side of the road. We thought it was a dog, a big Chihuahua maybe."

As they were on a family outing, Smith had a camera with her. And the large rodent did not mind having its portrait taken.

"When we got close it ran into ditch, but it came back up on the road," she said. "We had no clue (what it was). We came home and tried to Google anything I could think of. We thought it looked something like a rabbit, a deer or a kangaroo. But nothing like it came up."

Whit Gibbons, a biologist at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, said the animal must have been released or escaped from a local home. "It's been a pet that escaped or someone got tired of it," he said. These 20-pound animals are sometimes kept as novelty pets.

"We are finding more and more examples of introduced species, those that are introduced and persist because our natural, native predators are gone," Gibbons said. "Not too many that remain could kill something like this."

The hare is a substantial animal, compared to the size of a dog it is much larger than any U.S. native hare or rabbit. However, it moves like a rabbit, but is not "a plutonium eating rabbit" as one person who saw the animal wondered. They are grazers, much like other hares, eating grass and other shrubs, something that is not in short supply.

An alien species being introduced can cause problems in an unaccustomed ecosystem - such as kudzu locally or the cane toad in Australia. So is there any threat from the super hare?

"I don't think this kind of animal is going to get out of control," Gibbons said. "Competitors would be our rabbits - cotton tails - and deer. I don't know of any populations of them. If there were, that might become an issue."

There is no knowledge of any groups of these animals and "they're not a common sight out at the SRS, not something you see out there," Gibbons said.

Contact Mike Gellatly at mgellatly@aikenstandard.com.