Being originally from Argentina, I know this creature, and I know that it spits. My knowledge was challenged with Jon’s skills.
When I saw Jon’s picture on Instagram, I thought he was with a “Vicuña”, a protected specie of camelids you can see in Argentina (up north in the wild; we do have big cities and Netflix, you know); but it was an Alpaca, vicuñas’ biggest relatives, and thanks to some googling I learned a new thing today: “Alpacas are a domesticated version of vicuñas”, according to livescience.com.
In Argentina, if there is one thing people teach you when you are in front of a vicuña, that would be, “Keep your distance. It may spit you”, which is translated these days to, “Dude, no selfies with the vicuña.” Something like that happened to Jon; his neighbor – the owner of the alpacas – said, “They are afraid of people and won’t come near you”. But Jon, he is the Alpaca Whisperer girl…
