116 GUANACOS: LIVING AND DYING 



Guanacos are very rarely seen by themselves, but 

 may be met with in flocks varying from five hundred 

 down to six. They are easily tamed, but, unlike most 

 other animals, become more ready to defend themselves 

 in their tame than in their wild state. They will even 

 learn to attack man, and to strike out in a peculiar way 

 with both knees from behind. 



One strange fact has been discovered about the 

 guanacos which is not as yet known of any other crea- 

 tures. When, by some curious and unexplained instinct, 

 they feel that they have received their death wound, or 

 been stricken with their last illness, they leave their 

 fellows, and make straight for one of their dying places, 

 perhaps hundreds of miles away. Some of these dying 

 places have been seen by travellers, in South Pata- 

 gonia, where they are most frequent, usually near rivers, 

 in the midst of low trees, and thick scrub. Why the 

 stricken beast should take the long and often difficult 

 journey, instead of creeping away like other creatures 

 into the nearest hole or thicket to die, we do not know. 

 It may be an inherited longing for a spot which was 

 originally a place of shelter, or it may be that they are 

 pushed by invisible hands to the grassy refuge that is 

 whitened by their father's bones. What becomes of all 

 the dead animals ? Does anybody know ? Of the spar- 

 rows, the monkeys, the hares ? A ' dead donkey ' is 

 such a rare sight that it has turned into a proverb. 

 But what about the rest ? 



