Subject: Today's Biology Lesson -- The Camellids of South America
From: jespah@milton.u.washington.edu (Kathleen Hunt)
Date: 1990-11-15, 21:32
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

From: KJA102@psuvm.psu.edu
*As I recall, there was a clue in the 11/3 episode about a vicuna coat
*(the person who shot Cooper was supposed to be wearing one)  If I am
*not mistaken, the white animal on the windowsill in Ben Horne's office
*was a vicuna.  Leland took a piece of fur from the animal and put it in
*his pocket.

Huh?  That was a small white carnivore of some sort.  A vicuna is a large,
brown-with-a-white-belly hoofed quadruped related to the llama, with a very
long thin neck and very long thin legs.

For those who care (all 2 of you) there are four of those llama-type animals,
or at least, 4 that I know of.  Biologists insist on calling them "camellids"
and indeed they are related to camels and have much the same attitude problems.
They are the llama (which is a domestic animal), the alpaca, the guanaco, and
the vicuna.  The vicuna is the wildest and the most threatened.  They are all
from South America.

Llamas have recently become very popular in the U.S. as pack animals.  They
carry more than horses, eat less, and are less destructive on the mountain
paths they travel.  It's become common to see llamas in mountain towns...once
I was galloping a horse along a dirt road in the Green Mountains of Vermont,
and all of a sudden these two llamas appeared out of nowhere, SPITTING at my
horse.  My poor horse just about had a heart attack (and I nearly broke my
neck!).  Horses and llamas do not seem to get along.

Thus it is not as weird as it sounds for a vet in a mountain town
to be treating a llama.

Jespah