The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1895-09-28
CURIOUS INSTINCT OF THE LLAMA.
south American Animals Which Always
Hunt In One DYING Place.

1outh american animals which Always
Hunt Up One Dying Place.
1t is well known that at the south
ern extremity of Patagonia the qua
nacos have a dying place, a spot to
Which all individuals inhabiting the
surrounding plain repair at the ap-
proach of death to deposit their
bones. Darwin and Fitzroy first re-
corded this strange instinct in their
personal narratives, and their obser-
vations have since been fully con.
frmed by others. The best known OF
these dying Or burial places are OF
the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gal.
legos rivers, where the river valleyi
are covered with dense primeval
thickets of bushes and trees of stunt.
ed growth. There the ground is COY.
cred with the bones of countless defI
generations.
THE animals" says Darwin, I'll
most cases must have crawled befo1a
dying beneath and among the bush.
es. A strange instinct in a creatu (
so pre-eminently social in it's habits,
q dweller all it's life long on tho
open, barren plateau and mountain
sides. What a subject for a painter,
the gray wilderness of dwarf thorn
trees, aged and g~rotesque and scant;
leaved. nourished for /, 900 years il
the bones that whiten the ston,
ground at their roots, the interio.
lit family with the rays of the de.
parting sun, chill and gray, and ST.
lent and motionless-the guanacos'
Golgotha! In the long centuries.
stretching back into a dim immeas.
urable past, so many of this race
have journeyed hither from the
mountain and the plain to suffer the
sharp pang of death, that. to the
imagination, something of it all
seems to have passed into that hush.
ed and mournful nature. And now
one more, the latest pilgrim, hal
come, all his little strength spent in
his struggle to penetrate the close
thlcket, looking old and gaunt and
ghostly in the twilight, with long,
ragged hair, staring into the gloom
out of death dimmed sunken eyes.
To this account of the animals dy-
ing place and instinct Darwin adds,
II do not at all understand the rea-
son Of this, but 1 may observe that
the wounded guanacos at the Santa
Cruz invariably walked toward the
river"
1t would no doubt be rash to affirm
OF any instinct that it is absolutely
unique; but, putting aside soma
doubtful reports about a custom of
the Asiatic elephant, which may
have originated in the account of
Sindbad the sailors discovery of an
elephants burial place, we have no
knowledge of an instinct similar ia |
that of the guanacos in any Other
animal. So far as we know, it stands |
alone and apart, leading up or sug-
costing any family likeness to it. But
what chiefly attracts the mind to it |
Is its strangeness. 1t looks, il, fact,
less like an instinct of one of the in
ferior creatures than the supersti.
tlous observance of human beings,
who have knowledge Of death and
believe in a continued existence after
dissolution of a tribe that in past
times had conceived the idea that
the liberated spirit is only able to
find its way to its future abode by
starting at death from the ancient
dying place of the tribe OF family,
and thence moving westward or sky.
ward OF underground over the well
worn immemorlal track invisible to
material eyes.--Land and Water
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