The agouti is a significant harvester of seeds and fruits. Within its home range it accumulates stores for times of fruit scarcity, caching food in small pits which it excavates and then covers. Adult females defend parts of their home ranges when food is scarce. Young may be tolerated within the parent’s home range. An adult male defends as large an area as he can against other adult males, thereby ensuring the paternity of the young in his range. At high densities the ranges of a male and a female may be coincident, and thus they give the appearance of living in pairs (Smythe 1978). During times of fruit scarcity, the subadults may lose weight. When startled, agouti produce a bark like warning call to alert family members within the home range to a potential predator, and the long hairs of the rump are erected, increasing the animal’s apparent size. On encountering boas (Boa constrictor), they sit at a distance and drum with a hind foot, attracting other family members, who join them in foot drumming until the snake moves off (Kleiman 1974, Eisenberg 1974, Eisenberg and Redford 1999).  They are present in varzea and terra firme forests along the Rio Jurua in western Amazonian Brazil (Patton and Emmons 2015).

This species occurs in several protected areas within its geographic range.