Capybaras are prized for meat, not just because of their large size but because, bizarrely, the Roman Catholic Church traditionally deemed them honorary fish for Fridays, presumably because they live in water. Large as they are, modern capybaras are dwarfed by various giant South American rodents that went extinct only quite recently. The giant capybara, Protohydrochoerus, was the size of a donkey. Telicomys was an even larger rodent the size of a small rhinoceros which, like the giant capybara, went extinct at the time of the Great American Interchange, when the Isthmus of Panama ended South
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