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The vicuña is the smallest of the Andean camelids and
can stand 1.30 meters high. It features a graceful body and
moves with agility. Its fur is light brown along its back
and nearly all over its outer body, while its chest stomach
and inside legs are pure white.
The animal features a tufted chest with fibers that can hang
down 20 cm. At birth the vicuña weighs just 5 kg, growing
to 40 kg at adulthood. Females reach puberty at a year of
age but generally mate at two years; vicuñas take 340
days to whelp.
Its fiber has been classified as the finest animal fiber on
Earth, with an average diameter of 12.5-1.5 microns, but only
grows 3 cm long. Shearings yield up to 320 gm of fiber per
animal a year.
As the vicuña produces the finest fiber, it is in demand,
and for a time was in danger of extinction. But today, the
Peruvian government protects the species in intangible national
parks. Poachers, however, continue to hunt the species, gradually
whittling its numbers to 170,000 worldwide, of which 100,000
are found in Peru in areas over 3,800 meters in altitude.
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