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Sun05202012

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Spitind Mad Wild Camel of the Andes

Spitind Mad Wild Camel of the Andes

In remote corners of South America lives a feisty animal, the elegant camel-like guanaco. You've got to be taught to survive here, especially if you're a male guanaco. In the southern Andes Mountains, fierce blizzards and crippling cold threaten to freeze you to death. Then there are killer cats. This is the home of the mountain lion known here by the Inca name, puma. It's strong and powerful predator. If the puma does kill you, a long list of animals will gladly dine on your remains from little gray foxes to giant Andean condors. And you can't even trust your own kind. If the cold or the cats don't kill you, rivals for your territory will certainly try. But without a territory, you can't get a female to breed. So a male guanaco's life is filled with conflict. Supremacy is the objective, physical violence the method, females the prize.So if you're a male guanaco, tough isn't enough. You also have to be spitting mad. Born of volcanic fire, carved by ice and wind, the famous granite towers of Paine are the crowning glory of the world's longest mountain chain-the Andes. This is Southern Chile's Torres del Paine National Park only a thousand miles from the ice-cap of Antarctica. And just over the mountains is the Pacific Ocean a birthplace of storms.

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