A guanaco Lama guanicoe and a pair of greater rheas Rhea americana (plus a pair of crested screamers Chauna torquata behind them) wading in the water on a hot afternoon
It generally lives in small herds of from half a dozen to thirty in each; but on the banks of the St. Cruz we saw one herd which must have contained at least five hundred.
"Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, 1832-36" - Charles Darwin
These are the wild ancestors of the llama! They live in the southern regions of South America, particularly in Argentina, in grasslands, scrublands, mountains, and even in the infamously dry Atacama Desert. As relatives of camels they are well-adapted for living in dry environments, and their adaptations for living in low-oxygen high altitudes includes four times the number of red blood cells as a human! Their most common predator is the puma, which ranges down almost to the tip of South America, and is the apex predator in the continent’s mountains and plains.
The Cueva de las Manos, Río Pinturas, contains an exceptional assemblage of cave art, executed between 13,000 and 9,500 years ago. It takes its name (Cave of the Hands) from the stencilled outlines of human hands in the cave, but there are also many depictions of animals, such as guanacos (Lama guanicoe ), still commonly found in the region, as well as hunting scenes. The people responsible for the paintings may have been the ancestors of the historic hunter-gatherer communities of Patagonia found by European settlers in the 19th century.
Perhaps tens of thousands of years old; this should be in a modern art gallery somewhere.
🙌📸 🌬❄️Guanacos (Lama guanicoe) en el Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, es una especie de camélido representativo de la fauna de la región.
XII Region de Magallanes, Chile🇨🇱
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📭Punta Arenas, XII Region de Magallanes, Chile.