A spotted forest rodent that feeds on fallen fruit.
Rows of pale spots run along both sides of its brown body. The legs are short and the tail is barely visible.
In a roughly 10 km² area within Belize’s Central Belize Corridor, researchers radio-tracked four male and two female pacas between 2010 and 2012. Their home ranges overlapped extensively, but core-area overlap was low. No simultaneously tracked pacas had an exclusive home range or core area.
Daytime locations were recorded on 57 days, and researchers identified 38 resting sites. Because one male shifted his range substantially, it was analyzed as two ranges, giving seven ranges with an average of 5.7 sites each. Most sites were within core areas. Female sites were closer together and nearer water than male sites. No two pacas were recorded sharing a site simultaneously. Search effort for resting sites was 7–31 days per paca.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.