Most specimens have come from upland rainforest of the Andes or outlier ridges (Grimwood 1969). Little is known about the wild habits of this species, but in captivity it is tame. Claws indicate it to be a digger. It appears to be easy to capture for both predator and man. It is active by night, resting in caves or dens at the base of trees. This rodent has some climbing ability, especially prominent in young animals. It feeds on fruits, leaves, and plant shoots. It produces a wide variety of vocalizations, and males seeking mates produce a complicated, intricate series of calls. Gestation lies between 222 and 280 days; generally only two young are born (Eisenberg 1974, Eisenberg and Redford 1999, Lord 1999). Preferred habitat is seasonally flooded tropical evergreen rainforest, and it occurs limitedly along the Amazonian margins of the species range (Patton 2015). Nests in rock crevices, hollow logs, or self-dug burrows either solitarily or in groups of 2-5 (Saveedra-Rodriguez et al. 2012, Patton 2015). While species can live in forest fragments the limiting factor of abundance and distribution is adequate dens (Patton 2015).

This species is known from the Merida Andes of northwestern Venezuela, all three Andean cordilleras in Colombia, south along both Andean slopes of Ecuador, the eastern Andean slope and western Amazon Basin of Peru and Bolivia, and western Brazil (Patton 2015). The elevation range is approximately 250-3,200 m spanning western margins of lowland Amazonian rainforest to upper montane tropical forest on the Andean slopes (Patton 2015). There have been two new records in Colombia, extending the distribution by 1,500 m in the Andes slopes and lowlands of the Choco Biogeographico of Colombia (Saavedra-Rodriguez et al. 2012, Patton 2015).

There are records in several protected areas.