Get to know our new vicuna herd!

Visitors to Highland Wildlife Park in recent years will be familiar with Merino, our amazing vicuna, well known for sitting on his rock pile. Earlier this year Merino moved to Edinburgh Zoo where he is settling in well and we have welcomed four new vicunas to the park: Lino our male and three females named Coco, Juanita and Ozzy.

Vicunas are native to the central Andes in South America and are relatives of the llama. In the time of the Inca Empire, vicunas were believed to be the property of the gods and only Incan rulers were allowed to wear clothing made of their wool.

The three females arrived in the middle of June and were joined a couple of weeks later by the male. We started them with access to only one part of the enclosure to allow them to settle in and for us to monitor them. Now, all four have settled in their new home really well and have free roam of the whole seven-acre paddock. They have explored every corner of their enclosure and enjoy nibbling on the birch trees that grow within it.

Our three females are more confident than our male, Lino. He will often follow them around the enclosure and let them do the exploring. At the first sight of anything scary, which can be as much as a large bird flying over, he will run up the nearest hill or mound and alarm call, which sounds a lot like a squeaky dog toy! Our females however are very relaxed and can often be seen grazing the paddock or sunning themselves by the side of the road.

Unlike many other ungulate species at the park vicuna mark their territories with poo piles. This means there are specific spots they will always poo in and they will even stomp their feet on top of them to make sure they stay stuck to the ground. Because building up these poo piles is an important part of a vicuna’s natural behaviour we don’t remove them too often. When we do come to clean up a poo pile it is all in one place making it quick and easy to remove, which cannot be said for the other species we look after.

My favourite thing about our vicuna is their behaviour. When the weather gets hot (which occasionally does happen in the Scottish Highlands) our vicuna like to sit in shallow water. We provide little paddling pools the vicuna can lie in to cool off and occasionally we will even find them sitting in their water troughs! They also love a dust bath and will roll around on sand piles or even the gravel road to remove any dirt and clean their coat.

We are one of eight UK collections that hold vicuna and have previously been home to a group of males that were quite solitary, so it’s nice to have a small herd that get on so well. Our new herd can be found in our drive through reserve.

Andy Tonge

Experienced hoofstock keeper