THE ECOLOGICALLY FRIENDLY ALPACA Alpacas are camelids, aristocratic little cousins of the llama and the camel.  Native to Peru, they have thrived at the top of the misty and mystic Andes for a millennia. Alpacas can be found roaming wild through the ruins of Machu Picchu and as tamed ranch animals.  They are amazingly 'green' little critters, as well. In a time when cashmere goat herds in China reportedly are ruining hundreds of thousand of acres of farm land by digging up the top soil with their sharp hooves, creating enormous dust storms carried around the world, Alpacas leave a considerably smaller ecological footprint, so to speak.   The Alpaca has soft hooves, like a camel, and they don't dig and damage the earth. Alpacas also don't need much water to drink, like their cousins, and, they are living compost makers.  Alpacas prefer to eat what other animals won't touch...dried brush and dead twigs, for example...and out the other end comes a neat little pile of astonishingly rich and agriculturally productive fertilizer.  In sum, Alpacas don't add to the world's increasingly dire competition for water or edible food sources. Learn more about alpacas at Wikipedia.

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