The vicuña‘s social habit of pooping in the same place could help Andean ecosystems adapt as glaciers rapidly retreat due to climate change. Researchers found that communal loos for vicuñas (Lama vicugna), a wild camelid relative of the llama, in barren and recently deglaciated areas in the high Andes in southeastern Peru are packed full […]
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The vicuña‘s social habit of pooping in the same place could help Andean ecosystems adapt as glaciers rapidly retreat due to climate change. Researchers found that communal loos for vicuñas (Lama vicugna), a wild camelid relative of the llama, in barren and recently deglaciated areas in the high Andes in southeastern Peru are packed full of nutrients that encourage plant growth.
These latrines act as little islands of nutrients and biodiversity as a recently deglaciated landscape is mostly gravel and rock, barely constituting soil, says Clifton Bueno de Mesquita, a research scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, co-author of the study published in Nature Scientific Reports.
