60 Fun Facts About Llama

The Spanish phrase 'cómo se llama' has nothing to do with llamas; what does it ask for?

Someone's name. The 'llama' here is part of the verb llamarse, to be called, so the phrase means 'what is he called?', and most Spanish speakers say it 'yama'.

What is a baby llama called?

A cria. The word comes from Spanish cría, a suckling young animal, and it fits: for its first few days a newborn llama nurses in short bouts every hour or two.

Llamas belong to which family of animals?

Camels. Llamas are humpless members of the camel family, close enough kin that in 1998 scientists in Dubai bred a camel-llama hybrid, the cama.

Which wild animal is the ancestor of the domestic llama?

The guanaco. Andean herders began taming it thousands of years ago for use as a pack animal, and it still runs wild from the high Andes to Patagonia.

Llamas are willing pack animals up to a point; what does one typically do when it is overloaded?

It refuses to move. An overloaded llama sinks to the ground and may hiss, spit or kick until its pack is lightened; fairly loaded, it will cover 25 kilometres or more in a day.

From which language did Europeans adopt the word 'llama'?

Quechua. Spanish borrowed the word in the 1530s, and an old spelling, 'glama', survives in the animal's scientific name, Lama glama.

Where did the llama's earliest ancestors evolve, some 40 million years ago?

North America. The llama's ancestors lived there for tens of millions of years; some walked south once the Isthmus of Panama rose about three million years ago, and those left behind died out by the end of the last ice age.

Which snack takes its name from ch'arki, a word from the llama's Andean homeland?

Jerky. Ch'arki meant dried meat, llama included; Spanish speakers borrowed it as 'charqui', English ears turned that into 'jerky', and the verb 'to jerk' meat comes from the same word.

When a llama is truly furious, where does the foul-smelling spit it fires at a rival come from?

Its stomach. The spit is half-digested food brought up from a three-chambered stomach, and llamas so dislike the smell themselves that vets stop a spitter by draping a cloth over its nose.

Which feature of a llama's mouth lets it pluck single leaves and shoots with great precision?

A split upper lip. Its two halves move independently and work like fingers, gripping a leaf or stem and drawing it into the mouth.

What is a llama's mating call, made by an aroused male, called?

An orgle. The male strikes up the gargling, buzzing call as he mounts and keeps it going throughout, sometimes for as long as 45 minutes.

A llama's pregnancy lasts about eleven months, as long as that of which farm animal?

A horse: both carry their young for about eleven months. Within about two weeks of conceiving, a pregnant llama starts rejecting the male, often by spitting at him, which gives breeders an early sign.

Which routine job of a mother cow or ewe does a llama skip entirely after giving birth?

Licking the newborn clean. A llama mother nuzzles her baby and touches noses with it but never licks it dry, and the youngster is usually on its feet within the hour all the same.

In what position do llamas mate, unusually for a large animal?

Lying down. The female drops onto her chest with her legs folded beneath her, a pose llama keepers call the kush, and the pair may stay that way for up to 45 minutes.

At what time of day are most llama births?

Between 8 am and noon. Over 70 percent of births come in the morning, which is thought to give the newborn time to dry off and warm up before the freezing Andean night.

Which of these is a common way llamas communicate with each other?

Humming. Llamas hum when they are curious, worried or tired, and a mother hums to greet her newborn.

What does it usually mean when a llama lays its ears back?

It is unhappy or agitated. Flattened ears are the first warning: ignore them and the llama pins them tighter, tips its nose skyward and finally spits.

Among llamas themselves, what is the usual reason for spitting?

To discipline lower-ranked animals. Spitting settles the pecking order, above all over who eats first, and a well-raised llama seldom spits at people at all.

Which of these is a typical move when two male llamas spar?

Neck wrestling. Each male wraps his neck around his rival's and bites at his legs, trying to force him to the ground; the loser gives in with his neck lowered and his tail raised.

On ranches in the western United States, guard llamas most often protect which livestock?

Sheep and goats. The llama adopts the flock as its own herd, sounds an alarm cry and charges at coyotes and dogs; over half the ranchers in one Iowa State survey said their predator losses stopped completely.

Why did ranchers find that one male guard llama protects a flock better than several?

Two males bond with each other and may ignore the flock. A single male with no other llama for company adopts its charges as his herd instead, and needs no training to start seeing off dogs and coyotes.

'Berserk llama syndrome', in which a grown male attacks people as rivals, is caused by what in its youth?

Too much human handling. A bottle-fed baby can imprint on people and, once grown, treat them as fellow llamas to be charged and kicked.

Antibodies from Winter, a llama living in Belgium, made headlines for neutralising the virus behind which disease?

COVID-19. Winter's antibodies had already beaten the related SARS and MERS viruses in the lab, and llama antibodies are so much smaller than ours that they are known as nanobodies.

Which invention was missing from Inca transport, leaving llama caravans to carry the empire's goods?

The wheel. Inca roads were never meant for carts: they climbed the Andes by long flights of stone steps, built for travellers on foot and llamas under packs.

Early Spanish chroniclers in the Andes described the llama with their word for which farm animal?

Sheep. One chronicler called the Inca's llama herders 'shepherds', and he described Urcuchillay, the star-god they prayed to for their flocks, as a ram of many colours.

Why do herders on the high Andes burn dried llama dung as fuel?

Almost no trees grow there, so dung does the work of firewood: it even fuelled the steam engine of the Yavari, a British-built ship that sailed Lake Titicaca.

Inca skywatchers traced a mother llama not from stars but from the dark clouds of what?

The Milky Way. Alpha and Beta Centauri are her eyes and a smaller dark patch beneath her is her nursing baby; herders believed this heavenly llama gave life to the flocks on Earth.

Under Spanish rule, great caravans of llamas hauled silver ore from the mines at which Bolivian city?

Potosí. One Spanish observer reckoned that as many as 300,000 llamas worked the traffic from its mines alone, a trade later taken over largely by horses, mules and donkeys.

Llamas were first brought to the United States in the late 1800s for what purpose?

Zoo exhibits. A ban on South American hoofed stock, meant to keep out foot-and-mouth disease, then held numbers down for decades, and llamas stayed a zoo curiosity until ranchers took them up in the 1970s.

In America's llama boom of the 1980s and 1990s, what were investors mainly buying?

Breeding stock. With little market for the wool or meat, each buyer was counting on selling offspring to the next; when the bubble burst, the US herd fell from about 145,000 in 2002 to under 40,000 by 2017.

Runaway llamas went viral the same day in 2015 as which sensation?

The dress. Two llamas bolted during a visit to an Arizona retirement home and had the internet cheering together; hours later a photo of a dress had it arguing over blue and black or white and gold.

Which of these tells a llama from an alpaca at a glance?

The llama is far bigger, at roughly twice an alpaca's weight, because the two were bred for different jobs: llamas to carry loads, alpacas for their fine fleece.

A llama's distinctive curved ears are often described as being shaped like what?

Bananas. The long, inward-curving ears are a handy way to pick a llama out from a group of alpacas, whose ears are short and spear-shaped.

Llama trains carry supplies up to LeConte Lodge, a mountaintop inn with no road, in which US national park?

Great Smoky Mountains. Guests can reach the lodge only on foot, so a team of llamas hauls its supplies up the Trillium Gap Trail, passing behind Grotto Falls on the way.

Which actress voices Mama Llama in Netflix's animated series 'Llama Llama', based on Anna Dewdney's picture books?

Jennifer Garner. Dewdney died of brain cancer in 2016, more than a year before the series aired, and her longtime partner, Reed Duncan, helped see it to the screen as a producer.

Which naturalist gave the llama its first scientific name, in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus. The Swede who gave species their two-part Latin names lumped the llama in with larger relatives; it was moved to a genus of its own, Lama, in 1800.

Llamas belong to a group zoologists call Tylopoda, a name coined from Greek for which feature?

Their padded feet. The name joins Greek words for a cushion or knob and a foot: instead of hooves, a llama walks on leathery pads, which wear a trail far less than hard hooves do.

What is the wild ancestor of the alpaca?

The vicuña. For two centuries naturalists assumed the alpaca had been bred from the llama, until DNA tests in 2001 traced it to this smaller wild animal with a far finer fleece.

Which American humorist wrote 'The one-l lama, he's a priest; the two-l llama, he's a beast'?

Ogden Nash. He went on to bet a silk pajama that there isn't any three-l lllama, then added a footnote admitting that someone had told him about the three-alarmer, a kind of fire.

Why is vicuña wool so expensive?

The animals are wild and rarely shorn. Villagers herd them into pens, clip a fleece that weighs only a few hundred grams and set them free again, a round-up the Inca practised first.

Which country shows the vicuña, once hunted almost to extinction, on its national coat of arms?

Peru. Hunters had cut perhaps a million vicuñas to ten thousand or fewer by the 1960s; a ban on the wool trade and decades of protection had brought them back to several hundred thousand by 2020.

The llama's wild ancestor relies on sheer speed to escape which wild cat, its main predator?

The puma. On open steppe there is nowhere to hide, so the herd bolts together to confuse the cat, and a newborn is on its feet within minutes, ready to follow its mother.

Unlike those of nearly every other mammal, a llama's red blood cells are which shape?

Oval, where most mammals' are round discs. The small oval cells and blood unusually rich in haemoglobin help a llama draw enough oxygen from thin air at 4,000 metres.

In Minecraft, which household item can a tamed llama wear as decoration?

Carpet. Each colour shows as a different patterned rug, and because the developers wanted a beast of burden, a llama can also carry a chest and lead others in a caravan.

In which 2000 Disney film is a spoiled young Inca turned into a llama by a botched poisoning?

The Emperor's New Groove. It began in 1994 as a sweeping musical called Kingdom of the Sun, with songs by Sting; four years on, Disney threw most of it out and rebuilt the story as a light comedy.

Who voices Kuzco, the vain ruler turned into a llama in Disney's 2000 comedy?

David Spade. He plays opposite John Goodman's kindly peasant Pacha, while Patrick Warburton's dim henchman Kronk went on to star in a sequel of his own in 2005.

Which battle-royale video game uses piñata llamas as loot containers?

Fortnite. The llama piñatas began as lucky-dip loot boxes sold in its Save the World mode; Epic ended the lucky dip in 2019, letting buyers see inside first, and was sued over the old ones all the same.

Which city-building game series is dotted with llama jokes because its studio once voted the animal its mascot?

SimCity. Designer Will Wright said the Maxis staff voted on an unofficial mascot and the llama beat a Boston tree fern and a beef tapeworm, hence touches such as SimCity 2000's Braun Llama Dome.

Which programming language's famous introductory book is nicknamed 'the Llama book'?

Perl. Programmers know its beginner's tutorial, Learning Perl, simply as the Llama, and the nickname stuck so well that the sequel picking up where it leaves off is called the Alpaca book.

Which British programmer, known for psychedelic shooters such as Tempest 2000, named his studio Llamasoft?

Jeff Minter. He founded Llamasoft in 1982 and has been slipping llamas and other woolly grazers into his games ever since, so often that interviewers keep asking him why.

In the web series Llamas with Hats, what are the two llamas called?

Carl and Paul. Each short has the sensible Paul confronting Carl over his latest atrocity, from a dead man in the living room to a sunken cruise ship, and the crimes grow more grandiose every episode.

Llamas with Hats was made by FilmCow, the studio behind which earlier viral short?

Charlie the Unicorn. Jason Steele posted it on Newgrounds in 2005 under a pen name, and its runaway success let him build the FilmCow studio around it.

After tipsy youths took Serge, a French circus llama, for a tram ride in 2013, what did the circus's director do?

Dropped the charges. He had filed a complaint, but photos of the night out delighted the French internet and made Serge famous, and the llama came home unharmed.

Which staple of Old World herding did Andean llama herders do without?

Milk. Llamas were never milked for people: a mother lets down only a small amount at a time, which is why her own baby has to nurse so often.

Llamas keep their pasture unusually clean thanks to which habit?

Using a shared latrine. The whole herd leaves its droppings in the same few spots and will not graze near them, which also helps to keep parasites from spreading.

What triggers ovulation in a female llama?

The act of mating itself. Llamas have no heat cycle: the egg is released a day or so after mating, so a female can be bred at almost any time of year.

In what position does a llama normally give birth?

Standing up. She usually manages without any help and delivers a single baby: twins are so rare that most twin pregnancies end early.

What is a castrated male llama, long the usual choice of guard animal, called?

A gelding. An uncut male may try to mate with the animals he is guarding and can injure or even kill them, which is why ranchers long preferred the castrated animal.

Llama wool is almost free of which natural grease?

Lanolin, the wax that waterproofs a sheep's coat. Llama fleece is light and nearly grease-free, which is one reason hand-spinners and weavers prize it.

What are a male llama's six sharp, curved teeth called?

Fighting teeth. Males use them when they spar, biting at a rival's legs, and because the teeth keep growing, vets usually cut them off flush with the gum, which protects handlers too.