Llamas left North America—then only the Andes kept them
Camelid ancestors arose on North America’s Great Plains about forty million years ago and walked into South America roughly three million years ago. By the close of the last ice age they were gone from the north. Andean peoples kept the domestic llama as pack animal and meat source—living memory of a lineage that once ranged California to Florida.
The llama (Lama glama) is a domesticated South American camelid. Herd animals with soft, low-lanolin wool, they learn simple tasks quickly and can carry about a quarter to a third of their body weight for eight to thirteen kilometres. Europeans borrowed the Quechua name. DNA ties llamas chiefly to wild guanacos and alpacas to vicuñas, though hybridisation blurs lines. As of 2007 South America held over seven million llamas and alpacas; late-twentieth-century North American imports left more than 158,000 llamas and 100,000 alpacas.
Fossils show llama-like forms were common in Pleistocene Rockies and Central America; some species dwarfed today’s stock. Extinct Hemiauchenia occupied ice-age North America. Old World camels’ ancestors crossed the Bering bridge from that northern homeland; the Isthmus of Panama’s rise about three million years ago opened the southern trek of the Great American Interchange. Aymara myth casts a Heavenly Llama that drinks the ocean and rains by urinating, destined to return to highland springs at time’s end.
Adults stand about 1.7–1.8 metres at the crown and may weigh 130–272 kilograms, typically living fifteen to twenty-five years. They are not true four-chamber ruminants but ferment tough cellulose in a three-compartment stomach, then re-chew; an exceptionally long colon reclaims water in arid country. Females are induced ovulators without a heat cycle, mate lying in the kush position for twenty to forty-five minutes, and gestate about 11.5 months (around 350 days). Crias usually arrive in under thirty minutes, mostly between 8 a.m. and noon—timing that may cut night hypothermia risk—and stand to nurse within an hour.
Source: Llama
