Biometry of the Skull of Wild and Farm Long-tailed Chinchilla (Chinchilla laniger, Molina, 1782).

This study aimed at presenting the values of 47 metric traits and 20 cranial indices of the skull of 291 mature farm chinchillas and comparing these data with those being determined on 32 chinchilla skull specimens from the Natural History Museum in London. Measurements of the viscerocranium, neurocranium and mandible parameters were taken. No normal distribution of these traits was observed. The values of selected Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were calculated. It was found that most cranial traits of the farm chinchillas showed statistically significantly higher values (P≤0.01) when compared to those being determined on the skulls of museum specimens. The effect of the farm environment, in which the farm chinchillas had been kept for many generations, was a likely reason for these differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]