Como te llamas, alpaca?

There are 4 species of South American camelids, the llama, the alpaca, the vicuña and the guanaco. On our trip to Peru, the Pretty Lady and I saw all 4 species (the guanaco took some finding). The llama and the alpaca are the two domesticated species, while the vicuña and the guanaco are wild. It's not clear whether or not the llama and the alpaca are domesticated versions of the vicuña and the guanaco. As can be told from their family name, they are closely related to camels, and form a clade, Camelidae.

First up, the llama. We saw many camelids in the company of locals, but not all of them were llamas - in fact a large number of them were alpacas. Llamas are beasts of burden in Peru, much like the donkey or the horse, and we saw several laden with packs. However, llamas can only carry approximately 30kg a day (according to our Inca Trail guide) and are thus less useful than a human porter.

The adjacent picture shows a herd of llamas at Machu Picchu. Their job is to crop the grass growing on the terraces, living lawnmowers if you will. There was a baby llama born just 4 days before we arrived at Machu Picchu, but there were so many tourists surrounding it that we couldn't snap a picture.

Next up, the alpaca. They are very similar to llamas, but are slightly smaller, and are prized for their wool and their meat more than llamas are. We couldn't tell llamas from alpacas, so we got some tips from one of our guides, Emilio in Puno. According to him, the key is to look at the ears. Llamas have straight ears, while alpacas have slightly curved ears. It's not very clear from the adjacent image what shape the alpaca's ears are, but Emilio assured me that they were definitely, incontrovertibly, alpacas. The hotel we stayed at in Puno had a herd of alpacas on the grounds, all used to tourists standing around cooing over them.

Alpaca meat is gamey and rich, like a cross between aged beef and venison. It takes on smokey flavours very well, and I loved the grilled alpaca steaks that so many restaurants served. I also had alpaca in a stew, with onions, rice and aji pepper, but the rich sweet gaminess that characterises the meat was lost in the stew. Shame.

On to the vicuña, a wild species of camelid very much prized for its soft wool. Vicuña wool is at least as good quality as cashmere, and very much rarer, as the animal is heavily hunted and poached to get at the valuable wool. They can be distinguished from the alpaca and llama by the spindly deer-like legs, a feature that also makes the baby vicuña look like Bambi. The adjacent image is of a baby vicuña that a Quechua woman near Sillustani. She was selling photo-ops to tourists.

Also near Sillustani is a large lake with an island in the middle. On that island live a herd of 2,000 vicuñas, protected and managed sustainably for their fur. There is only a single gamekeeper, and he's responsible for keeping away poachers.

Last, and hardest to find in Peru, is the guanaco. The guanaco occupies a slightly different habitat compared to the other 3 camelids - it lives further south, in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. To see one, we had to go to Lima zoo. But we managed to take a picture, and that's the adjacent image. It's got the vicuña's spindly legs, but is much larger, comparable in size to the llama.

It's not easy to tell the 4 species apart. Clearly, the wild animals have spindlier legs, and resemble deer more. The llama is also slightly larger than the alpaca, as is the guanaco compared to the vicuña, but for the domesticated species at least, large alpacas overlap in size with small llamas. There's the ear test, as described above, but it's hard to tell. I also suspect that alpacas have a slightly shorter muzzle compared to llamas, but the guide wouldn't confirm this. I wonder if you could tell by taste?