Llama Wallpapers

Llama animal - Bolivia, wallpapers: The Llama (Lama glama) is a large camelid native to South America. The term llama is sometimes used more broadly, to indicate any of the four closely related animals that make up the South American branch of the family Camelidae: the llama itself, the vicuña, alpaca, and guanaco. Differentiating characteristics between llamas and alpacas are that llamas are larger and have more elongated heads. The main difference between llamas and camels is that camels have a hump or humps and llamas do not. Llama, sometimes rendered lama in the 1900s, is a word used by the Peruvians to designate one of a small group of closely associated animals, which, before the Spanish conquest of the Americas, were the only domesticated ungulates of the country. They were kept not only for their value as beasts of burden, but also for their flesh, hides, and wool. In fact, llamas were used in place of the horse, the ox, the goat, and the sheep of the Old World. The word is now mainly restricted to one particular species or variety of the group, and sometimes used in a generic sense to cover the whole. Llamas are seeing increasing use in North America as fiber producing animals and as guard animals for sheep herds, which they protect from coyote attacks. Although they were often compared by early writers to sheep and spoken of as such, their affinity to the camel was very soon perceived. They were included in the genus Camelus in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus. They were, however, separated by Cuvier in 1800 under the name of Lama along with the alpaca and the guanaco. Vicuñas are in genus Vicugna. The animals of the genus Lama are, with the two species of true camels, the sole existing representatives of a very distinct section of the "Artiodactyla" or even-toed ungulates, called Tylopoda, or "bump-footed," from the peculiar bumps on the soles of their feet, on which they tread. This section thus consists of a single family, the Camelidae, the other sections of the same great division being the Suina or pigs, the Tragulina or chevrotains, and the Pecora or true ruminants, to each of which the Tylopoda have more or less affinity, standing in some respects in a central position between them, borrowing as it were some characters from each, but in others showing great special modifications not found in any of the other sections. The discoveries of a vast and previously unsuspected extinct fauna of the American continent of the Tertiary period, as interpreted by the palaeontologists Leidy, Cope, and Marsh, has thrown a flood of light upon the early history of this family, and upon its relations to other mammals. It is now known that llamas at one time were not confined to the part of the continent south of the Isthmus of Panama, as at the present day, for their remains have been abundantly found in the Pleistocene deposits of the region of the Rocky Mountains, and in Central America, some attaining a much larger size than those now existing. Some species of llamas did stay in North America during the last ice ages. 25,000 years ago, llamas would have been a common sight in modern-day California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Missouri, and Florida. These North American llamas belong to a single genera, Hemiauchenia, which is presently extinct. Many camel-like animals exhibiting different generic modifications and a gradual series of changes, coinciding with the antiquity of the deposits in which they are found, have been traced from the thoroughly differentiated species of the modern epoch down through the Pliocene to the early Miocene beds. Their characters having become more generalized, they have lost all that especially distinguishes them as Camelidae: they are merged into forms common to the ancestral type of all the other sections of the Artiodactyles. Hitherto none of these annectant forms have been found in any of the fossiliferous strata of the Old World; it may therefore be fairly surmised (according to the evidence at present before us) that the Americas were the original home of the Tylopoda, and that the true camels have passed over into the Old World, probably by way of north Asia. Gradually driven southward, perhaps by changes of climate, and having become isolated, they have undergone further special modifications. Meanwhile, those members of the family that remained in their original birthplace have become, through causes not clearly understood, restricted solely to the southern or most distant part of the continent. There are few groups of mammals for which the palaeontological history has been so satisfactorily demonstrated as the llama. [br] [br] [br] [br] [br]

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Llama Wallpapers @ Mega Wallpapers (08 Edition)