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Animal Weight

How much does a Vicuña weight?

It is hard to guess what a Vicuña weights. But we have the answer:

An adult Vicuña (Vicugna vicugna) on average weights 47.5 kg (104.72 lbs).

The Vicuña is from the family Camelidae (genus: Vicugna). It is usually born with about 6.09 kg (13.42 lbs). They can live for up to 24.75 years. When reaching adult age, they grow up to 1.58 meter (5′ 3″). On average, Vicuñas can have babies 1 times per year with a litter size of 1.

As a reference: An average human weights in at 62 kg (137 lbs) and reaches an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). Humans spend 280 days (40 weeks) in the womb of their mother and reach around 75 years of age.

The average adult weight of a Vicuña is 47.5 kg (104.72 lbs)

The vicuña (Vicugna vicugna) or vicuna (both , very rarely spelled vicugna, which is actually the name of its genus) is one of the two wild South American camelids which live in the high alpine areas of the Andes, the other being the guanaco. Vicuñas are relatives of the llama, and are now believed to be the wild ancestor of domesticated alpacas, which are raised for their coats. Vicuñas produce small amounts of extremely fine wool, which is very expensive because the animal can only be shorn every three years and has to be caught from the wild. When knitted together, the product of the vicuña’s wool is very soft and warm. The Inca valued vicuñas highly for their wool, and it was against the law for anyone but royalty to wear vicuña garments; today, the vicuña is the national animal of Peru and appears in the Peruvian coat of arms.Both under the rule of the Inca and today, vicuñas have been protected by law, but they were heavily hunted in the intervening period. At the time they were declared endangered in 1974, only about 6,000 animals were left. Today, the vicuña population has recovered to about 350,000, and although conservation organizations have reduced its level of threat classification, they still call for active conservation programs to protect populations from poaching, habitat loss, and other threats.Previously the vicuña was thought not to have been domesticated, and the llama and the alpaca were both regarded as descendants of the closely related guanaco. But DNA research published in 2001 has shown the alpaca may well have vicuña parentage. Today, the vicuña is mainly wild, but the local people still perform special rituals with these creatures, including a fertility rite.

Animals of the same family as a Vicuña

We found other animals of the Camelidae family:

  • Alpaca bringing 64.9 kilos (143.08 lbs) to the scale
  • Guanaco bringing 95.5 kilos (210.54 lbs) to the scale
  • Llama bringing 107.66 kilos (237.35 lbs) to the scale
  • Bactrian camel bringing 550.76 kilos (1214.22 lbs) to the scale
  • Dromedary bringing 490.36 kilos (1081.06 lbs) to the scale

Animals with the same weight as a Vicuña

As a comparison, here are some other animals that weight as much as the Vicugna vicugna:

Animals with the same size as a Vicuña

Not that size really matters, but it makes things comparable. So here are a couple of animals that are as big as Vicuña:

Animals with the same litter size as a Vicuña

Here is a list of animals that have the same number of babies per litter (1) as a Vicuña:

Animals with the same life expectancy as a Vicuña

Completely different animals, but becoming as old as a Vicuña: