Vicuñas are the smallest of the camelids reaching 3 feet tall to the shoulders, 5 feet long head to body, and weighing 70-150 pounds depending on gender and range.

The vicuña’s coat is long and woolly with tawny brown coloration on their back, while their chest and throat is white with long hair. In parts of South America, natives will round up vicuñas every year and shear the ones with longer coats to prevent poaching and then release them back into the wild.

They can be easily distinguished from the closely related guanaco by the vicuña’s shorter head and longer ears.

Vicuñas are found only in South America. They inhabit the central Andes in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia at elevations of up to 16,000 feet.

Vicuñas live at high altitude because they have an oversized heart and lungs that provide more oxygen and makes life much easier in the thin air. During the day, they graze on the grassy plains at the base of the Andes mountains. At night, they retreat to the foothills and slopes for cover.

Vicuñas are not true ruminants like cows, sheep, and goats, but rather “pseudoruminants”. This means they eat in 2 different stages. Usually in the morning they will graze for several hours and then rest and ruminate later.

What they are really doing during the first stage is storing all of their food in a special chamber in their stomach. Once they are full, they find a safe place to rest and will “ruminate” or re-chew that food into smaller particles for several hours.

They chew their food in a figure 8 motion, swallow the food, and then pass it into the first chamber. As they are ruminating, the food is being cycled back into their stomach for further digestion. This is why many animals like vicuñas, cows, sheep, and goats seem to be chewing on nothing and laying around a lot, when in fact, they are very busy ruminating!

For vicuñas, this allows them to survive off of very poor quality food. Unlike other ruminants, they have only 3 chambers in their stomach as opposed to 4. The first 2 chambers have symbiotic bacteria that help break down and ferment the food and unlock stored nutrients. The third chamber is where they secrete stomach acid like we do to break it down even more. It’s also where they absorb most of the water in their food.

Finally, the intestines absorb the remaining nutrients and then pass into the final part, the cecum for more water extraction. Even more amazing is part of their intestines are spiral shaped, or corkscrew shaped, for better absorption! It is all an extremely well designed and efficient process.

They survive off of bunch grasses and Festuca plants, and will also lick rocks that have salt deposits.

Vicuñas are social animals and will live in groups of 5-15 females led by a single dominant male. Young males will form bachelor groups and females will form sororities or all female groups. This is nature’s way of ensuring a strong gene pool and limits inbreeding.

Mating happens in the spring between March and April. After an 11-month gestation period she gives birth to a single fawn that weighs about 10 pounds. Within a few hours, they are standing. She nurses her baby for about 10 months and after 1 year, they are completely independent.

As an animal with many predators it is important young vicuñas learn to walk and keep up with the herd as fast as possible.

Vicuñas have a long history with the Inca of Peru. Thousands of years ago, they were protected and only royalty could wear clothing made from their very fine coat.

It’s this coat that was a blessing and a curse to the vicuñas until modern times. It has some of the finest wool fibers found in mammals and due to its unique structure can trap air particles and provide unmatched insulation. It does a very good job at keeping the vicuña warm and its insulating abilities were noticed by man very quickly.

From the time of Spanish conquest until 1964, vicuñas were heavily hunted. Their numbers dropped as low as 6,000 until protection measures were implemented in 1974 and all trade in vicuña wool was banned.

Thankfully today, their population has rebounded and stands at about 350,000. To avoid poaching, there is an annual roundup where the local Inca can shear the vicuña every 2 years and release them back into the wild.

There are still some threats from poaching, but otherwise their population is stable and growing as a result of the sustainable wool harvest each year.