Guanaco

Name and taxonomy

The name comes from the Quechua word wanaku. A young guanaco is a chulengo, or a guanaquito. The scientific name is Lama guanicoe, in the family Camelidae, the camels. The type locality is the Andes of Patagonia in Chile.

Two subspecies are recognised. Lama guanicoe cacsilensis lives in the north, from northern Peru to northern Chile, and Lama guanicoe guanicoe holds the rest of the range. Some authors once treated the guanaco as a subspecies of the llama, since the llama descends from it. GBIF records the species in 15 countries.

Evolution and relatives

Camelids arose in North America. The ancestor of the true camels crossed into Asia about 7 million years ago. About 3 million years ago the guanaco's ancestor crossed the Panama land bridge into South America during the Great American Interchange. When the ice age megafauna died out, the New World camelids survived only in South America.

The guanaco has three close living relatives: the wild vicuña and the domestic llama and alpaca. A 2001 genetic study confirmed that the llama descends from the guanaco, though llamas have since crossed widely with alpacas. The alpaca descends from the vicuña. The Mapuche of Mocha Island tamed the guanaco a second time, producing the chilihueque, which vanished in the 17th century.

Appearance

The guanaco has the long neck, long legs and small head of all camelids, with a split upper lip and no horns. It measures 190 to 215 centimetres in the body. Size grows from north to south: the smallest animals are Peruvian, the biggest are from southern Chile. Wild guanacos of Tierra del Fuego were larger than those of Patagonia.

The wool is double: coarse guard hairs over a soft undercoat with fibres 16 to 18 micrometres thick, as fine as cashmere. The skin of the neck is thick, a shield against bites from pumas and from other males. Males and females look alike, but males carry enlarged canine teeth for fighting. Patches of thin wool on the flanks act as windows that the animal opens or closes by shifting its posture to shed or keep heat.

Habitat and range

The guanaco is the most widely spread of the four South American camelids. It lives from northern Peru through Bolivia, Chile and Argentina to Tierra del Fuego and Navarino Island. A small population survives in Paraguay. About 400 lived on Staats Island in the Falklands in 2003, from animals introduced in the 1930s.

The species prefers open, dry, windy country and avoids cliffs and steep rock. It uses desert, montane grassland, shrubland and even wet temperate forest. It ranges from sea level to 4,500 metres. In Patagonia the ice keeps it lower, because plants at high altitude lie under snow.

In the Atacama some guanacos live in fog oases called lomas. Cold sea air meets hot land and makes fog, which cacti catch and lichens soak up. The guanacos eat the lichens and the cactus flowers and so drink without rain. Today the species holds less than 40 percent of its former range.

Diet and feeding

The guanaco both grazes and browses. It eats grasses, shrubs, herbs, lichens, fungi, cacti, fruit and flowers, and switches as the seasons change. In the Andean foothills of Argentina two spiny shrubs make up much of the diet all year. It uses water and energy so well that it can live in the driest places on the continent.

Like a cow it swallows food with little chewing, ferments it in a forestomach and chews the cud later. The camelid stomach probably evolved that process on its own, separate from the ruminants. Herds move to the poorer pastures during the breeding season and to the richest ones outside it. It competes for grass with sheep, goats, cattle, horses and donkeys, which is why many ranchers treat it as a pest.

Behaviour and social life

The guanaco is active by day. In the breeding season it forms three kinds of group: family groups, male groups and loose sets of solitary males. A family group holds one territorial male with several females and their young, usually 5 to 13 adults. The male lets females and juveniles leave freely but controls which new females join.

The male defends a feeding territory of about 0.07 to 0.13 square kilometres. Rival males spit up to 2 metres, chase, bite at legs and neck, ram chests and wrestle with their necks. Wounds on the neck and legs are common in territorial males. Bachelor males gather in groups of 3 to 60, where the young ones spar for years before they win a territory.

Where winters are mild the herds stay put all year, and females may form winter groups of 10 to 90. Where snow or drought cuts the food, mixed herds of up to 500 migrate to sheltered ground. Home ranges in eastern Patagonia cover 4 to 9 square kilometres, and twice that in the west. The guanaco can run at 56 kilometres per hour over rock and slope, and it swims well.

Communication and senses

Open country lets guanacos signal by posture over long distances. A male stands broadside or bends his neck into an S to advertise himself and warn off rivals. A juvenile crouches with lowered neck, bent knees and raised tail to calm an angry male, a pose that may mimic nursing. Tail wagging passes signals within the group.

The alarm call is a high bleat that sounds like a short, sharp laugh. When the male hears or sees danger he calls, and the herd runs while he brings up the rear. Males click at each other during fights. Scent matters too: males mark their territories with dung piles, which also keep the family together.

Reproduction and life cycle

Mating takes place in the southern summer, mostly from early December to early January. The system is resource-defence polygyny: a male owns good pasture, and the females who feed there breed with him. A female ovulates 24 to 48 hours after mating, triggered by a signal in the semen. Each year about 75 percent of adult females breed but only 15 to 20 percent of adult males.

Gestation lasts 345 to 360 days, about 11.5 months. The single chulengo weighs about a tenth of its mother and can stand within an hour or so of birth. It follows its mother rather than hiding, which suits open ground. It starts to graze within weeks and feeds itself almost entirely by 8 months, though weaning runs from 4 to 8 months.

The territorial male drives out yearlings of both sexes at 11 to 15 months, probably to free food for the new calves. Females mature at 2 years and first breed at 3. Males mature at 2 to 4 years and become territorial at 4 to 6. A guanaco lives 20 to 25 years, up to 28 in the wild, and one reached 33.7 years in captivity.

Predators and threats

The puma is the main predator across the range. In some populations pumas take up to 80 percent of the chulengos that die. The culpeo, an Andean fox, was first seen attacking young guanacos in 2007 on Tierra del Fuego, where pumas are absent. Against a fox the adults form a ring around the young, then corner the fox and kick it away. Against a puma they watch, call and run.

Sheep fences kill many. A study found that 5.53 percent of yearlings and 0.84 percent of adults die on fences each year. Most tangle their legs in the top wire. Hunters called chulengueros take the young for their pelts, which pass as red fox fur. Livestock bring disease, overgrazing degrades the land and live shearing has caused capture myopathy in some wild animals.

Population and conservation

A 2016 estimate put the species at 1.5 to 2 million. Argentina holds 1,225,000 to 1,890,000, Chile 270,000 to 299,000, Peru about 3,000, Bolivia 150 to 200 and Paraguay 20 to 100. The IUCN lists the guanaco as Least Concern, and it sits on CITES Appendix II. In Chile every population except the one on Tierra del Fuego is classed as endangered.

Local recoveries show what protection can do. In Torres del Paine National Park the herd grew from 175 in 1975 to 3,000 in 1993. Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru all regulate use of the animal, but enforcement is weak and most habitat lies outside protected land. Where pumas now eat sheep, hares and red deer instead of guanacos, ecologists say the guanaco is ecologically extinct.

Relationship with humans

People have hunted the guanaco since before 7,300 BC. The Selk'nam of Tierra del Fuego lived on it, hunting with bow and bolas and making capes, bags and shelters from the hides. They wrapped their dead in a guanaco cape. Bolivians still pound the thick neck skin into shoe soles.

The wool is the modern prize, valued in South America second only to vicuña. Since the late 1990s teams have caught, sheared and released wild guanacos, and Argentina now produces about 1500 kilograms of fibre a year. Chile allows hunting only on Tierra del Fuego, where 13,200 were shot legally between 2007 and 2012. About 300 guanacos live in United States zoos and about 200 in private herds.

The guanaco is mild toward people but spits when annoyed, up to 1.8 metres. Its greatest gift to humans is probably the llama, the only pack animal of the Inca world.

In culture and myth

The oldest record of the guanaco in human culture is painted on rock. At Cueva de las Manos in Santa Cruz, Argentina, hunters painted guanacos surrounded by men with bolas between about 7,300 BC and AD 700. The cave became a World Heritage Site in 1999 and draws about 8,000 visitors a year.

In Andean religion the sacred animal is the guanaco's tame descendant. The Inca god Urcuchillay, a llama of many colours, watched over the herds. The Moche buried llamas with their dead, and in Aymara myth a Heavenly Llama has a place in creation. The wild guanaco appears in these stories only as kin of the llama. That suggests the Andean peoples saw it as game rather than a spirit.

People in Patagonia say the alarm call sounds like laughter. For the Tehuelche and Selk'nam the animal was the staple of the steppe, food and clothing rather than a symbol. Today it appears on the flag of Argentina's Santa Cruz province in spirit if not in outline, as the emblem of the open Patagonian country.