Lamas

Lamas are part of the so called South American camelids family, which, other than the regular camel, doesn’t have a dorsal hump. They most probably descend from the wild Guanaco and have already been domesticated since the 3rd century BC by the native inhabitants of the Andes. They kept them as valuable pack animals, but also for their meat, hides and wool. Therefore the lama had great importance to the Inca people and those related to them. More than ten million lamas were cultured and kept when the Spanish conquered South America.
It is true, that lamas spit, but usually they only do so to establish a hierarchy among the animals of the herds or to keep pushy and intrusive conspecifics at distance.
One of their distinctive characteristics is namely their friendly, curious and kind nature.

Family	Camelidae
Order	Artiodactyla
Suborder	Tylopoda
Origin and distribution	Originally at home in the South American Andes; today they are found almost all over the world
Habitat	High mountain pastures, semi-desert areas, savannas, grasslands, veldt
Diet	Grass, moss, lichen, fresh and dry leaves and hay
Behavior	Social herd animal
Life expectancy	Up to 20 years
Weight	120 to 150 kg
Height at the withers	Up to 120 cm, sometimes even 130 cm
Coat colors	Plain white, brown and black, spotted or patterned
Breeds	light (Classic), medium or dense wool (Wooly), Suri
Gestation period	330-360 days
Foals	1 per year
Characteristics	No hump; soft padded feet with two toes (Tylopoda); upper lip is split in two halves; banana shaped ears