The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1895-10-05
CURIOUS INSTINCT OF THE LLAMA.
sOuth American Animals Which A1ways
Hunt Up One Dying Place.

BOutn american Animals winch Away
Hunt Up One Dying Place.
1t is well known that at the south
ern extremity of Patagonia the qua
nacos have u dying place, a spot to
which all individuals inhabiting the
surrounding plain repair at the APP
proa,h of death to deposit THEN
bones. Darwin and Fitzroy first re-
corded this strange instinct in their
personal narratives, and their obser-
vations have since been fully con-
irmed by others. The best known {!
these dying or burial places are u
the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gal.
1egos rivers, where the river valleyi
are covered with dense primevsl
thickets of bushes and trees of stunt.
ed growth. There the ground is o ".
cred with the bones of countless det
generations.
1.-THE animals" says Darwin, "il
most cases must have crawled befo1i
dying beneath and among the bush.
es.' A strange instinct in a creatu I
so prominently social in it's habits.
q dweller all it's life long on tka
open, barren plateau and mountain
sides. What a subject for a painter,
the gray wilderness of dwarf thorn
trees, aged and g%rotesque and scantj
leaved, nourished for /, 900 years il
the bones that whiten the ston;
ground at their roots, the interic.
lit family with the rays of the de.
parting sun, chill and gray, and 81.
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 tho
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 moro, the latest pilgrim, haa
como, all his little strength spent in
his struggle to penetrate the close
thicket, 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 animal s dy-
ing place and instinct Darwin adds,
II do not at all understand the rea-
son Of this, but l may observe that
the wounded guanacos at the Santa
Cruz invariably walked toward the
river
1t would nodoubt be rash to affirm
of any instinct that it is absolutely
unique; but, putting aside some
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 nc
knowledge of an instinct similar to
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. Bu1
what chiefly attracts the mird to il
is it's strangeness. 1t looks, il, fact
less like an instinct of one of the in
ferior creatures than the suTersti
tious observance of human beings
who have knowledge of death an(
believe in a continued existence afte7
dissolution of a tribe that in pas
times had conceived the idea tina
the liberated spirit is only able t.
find it's way to its future abode b,
starting at death from the ancien
dying place of the tribe Or fa1uily
and thence moving westward Or sky
ward OF underground owe the wei
worn immemorlal track invisible t.
material eyes.--Land and Water