Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Artiodactyla > Camelidae > Vicugna > Vicugna vicugna

Vicugna vicugna (vicugna; vicuna)

Synonyms: Camelus vicugna (homotypic); Lama vicugna; Vicugna provicugna

Wikipedia Abstract

The vicuña (Vicugna vicugna) or vicugna (both /vɪˈkuːnjə/) is one of two wild South American camelids which live in the high alpine areas of the Andes, the other being the guanaco. It is a relative of the llama, and is now believed to be the wild ancestor of domesticated alpacas, which are raised for their coats. Vicuñas produce small amounts of extremely fine wool, which is very expensive because the animal can only be shorn every three years, and has to be caught from the wild. When knitted together, the product of the vicuña's wool is very soft and warm. The Inca valued vicuñas highly for their wool, and it was against the law for anyone but royalty to wear vicuña garments; today the vicuña is the national animal of Peru and appears in the Peruvian coat of arms.
View Wikipedia Record: Vicugna vicugna

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
12
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
39
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 25.16
EDGE Score: 3.26
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  110.232 lbs (50.00 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  12.655 lbs (5.74 kg)
Diet [2]  Herbivore
Diet - Plants [2]  100 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  2 years
Male Maturity [1]  2 years
Gestation [1]  11 months 10 days
Litter Size [1]  1
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [1]  32 years
Snout to Vent Length [3]  5.707 feet (174 cm)
Weaning [1]  7 months 3 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Chilean Winter Rainfall-Valdivian Forests Chile No
Tropical Andes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela No

Emblem of

Peru

Prey / Diet

Predators

Phalcoboenus megalopterus (Mountain Caracara)[5]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Microthoracius minor[6]
Microthoracius praelongiceps[6]

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 4Foraging ecology of Vicuña, Vicugna vicugna, in dry Puna of Argentina, Mariela Borgnia, Bibiana L. Vilá, Marcelo H. Cassini, Small Ruminant Research 88 (2010) 44–53
♦ 5FIRST QUANTITATIVE DATA ON THE DIET OF THE MOUNTAIN CARACARA (PHALCOBOENUS MEGALOPTERUS), EMILIANO DONADIO, MARIA J. BOLGERI AND ALVARO WURSTTEN, J. Raptor Res. 41(4):328–330
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0