BILLY SHIELDS: Over in Chesterfield County lies the metro Richmond Zoo, where the animals here all seem to talk in their own way.

PARROT: Hello?

BILLY SHIELDS: And move at their own pace.

In April, some new residents showed up to the zoo when Flora gave birth.

CRISTEN LEE: So we had a very exciting thing happen.

Highly anticipated, on April 28th, we had our capybaras born here at the zoo.

BILLY SHIELDS: It's the first time in 15 years that capybaras have been born at the zoo.

TAYLOR ANDELIN: People have loved them.

We posted on social media about them, put them on the website.

I sent an email about them and I was walking in the zoo and I heard guests talking about them like, “Yeah, we received this email.

We had to come see the capybara.

BILLY SHIELDS: They live in the enclosure with Pershing, the tapir.

And Larry, the rhea.

And these three sisters have sparked their own fan club.

ELLIE SOWINSKI: I was just like, “Oh my God, they're so tiny.” And they're so cute.

BILLY SHIELDS: You could say that these river dwelling rodents are a fascination of Ellie Sowinskis.

ELLIE SOWINSKI: The Backpack?

I got the set at a Comic-Con, and I, again, love capybaras.

I couldn't not get him.

And he actually holds a lot of stuff.

BILLY SHIELDS: An EKG technician at Chippenham Hospital, she says she checks in on the capybaras every couple of weeks, work permitting.

ELLIE SOWINSKI: I own two guinea pigs, and capybaras are basically the big version of them.

And that's kind of what sparked my fascination with them.

BILLY SHIELDS: Related to a guinea pig, a capybara is native to South America and can live up to a dozen years in captivity.

CRISTEN LEE: And if you look at they're very oddly shaped.

They have nostrils, eyes and ears that can stick up out of the water, basically like hippos, where you just see that out of the water.

BILLY SHIELDS: And a mother can anywhere from 3 to 12 pups a year.

ELLIE SOWINSKI: I love them.

Theyre just great animals.

They're super amicable to every other animal in the area.

They're just super great.

BILLY SHIELDS: These three pups don't have names yet, and the zoo is still determining where they'll go when they grow up.

For VPM News, I'm Billy Shields.