“…As such, the requirements for laboratory husbandry of chinchillas are well established [ 8 ] along with standard operating procedures for basic experimental methods such as appropriate animal handling, body fluid sampling and compound administration [ 33 ], paving the way for the use of the chinchilla in other fields in biomedical research. There are no inbred strains or breeds of domestic chinchillas; however, three different varieties are recognized: la plata , costina and raton with small differences in musculature and limb length in addition to different colour variants such as grey, white, black and brown [ 34 ]. An important contribution to the chinchilla as a research model was made in 2012, when whole-genome shotgun sequencing of the chinchilla genome was completed, and the following year, when the sequencing of the mitochondrial genome was completed [ 35 ].…”