Crossword clues for vicuna
vicuna
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Vicuna \Vi*cu"[~n]a\, Vicugna \Vi*cu"gna\, n. [Sp. vicu[~n]a. Cf. Vigonia.] (Zo["o]l.) A South American mammal ( Auchenia vicunna) native of the elevated plains of the Andes, allied to the llama but smaller. It has a thick coat of very fine reddish brown wool, and long, pendent white hair on the breast and belly. It is hunted for its wool and flesh.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Peruvian ruminant, c.1600, from Spanish vicuña, from Quechua (Peru) wikuna, the native name of the animal.
Wiktionary
n. A South American hoofed mammal, (taxlink Vicugna vicugna species noshow=1), closely related to the alpaca, llama, and guanaco.
n. (alternative form of vicuna English)
WordNet
n. the wool of the vicuna
a soft wool fabric made from the fleece of the vicuna
small wild cud-chewing Andean animal similar to the guanaco but smaller; valued for its fleecy undercoat [syn: Vicugna vicugna]
Wikipedia
The vicuña (Vicugna vicugna) or vicugna (both ) is one of two wild South American camelids which live in the high alpine areas of the Andes, the other being the guanaco. It is a relative of the llama, and is now believed to be the wild ancestor of domesticated alpacas, which are raised for their coats. Vicuñas produce small amounts of extremely fine wool, which is very expensive because the animal can only be shorn every three years, and has to be caught from the wild. When knitted together, the product of the vicuña's wool is very soft and warm. The Inca valued vicuñas highly for their wool, and it was against the law for anyone but royalty to wear vicuña garments; today the vicuña is the national animal of Peru and appears in the Peruvian coat of arms.
Both under the rule of the Inca and today, vicuñas have been protected by law, but they were heavily hunted in the intervening period. At the time they were declared endangered in 1974, only about 6,000 animals were left. Today, the vicuña population has recovered to about 350,000, and although conservation organizations have reduced its level of threat classification, they still call for active conservation programs to protect populations from poaching, habitat loss, and other threats.
Until recently, the vicuña was thought to not have been domesticated, and the llama and the alpaca were both regarded as descendants of the closely related guanaco. But recent DNA research has shown the alpaca may well have vicuña parentage. Today, the vicuña is mainly wild, but the local people still perform special rituals with these creatures, including a fertility rite.
The vicuña is a camelid native to South America.
Vicuña may also refer to:
Usage examples of "vicuna".
Soldiers marched in, escorting strings of mules carrying chests of gold and silver, goatskins filled with bezoar stones, and bales of vicuna wool.
Not only that, it was a tan-colored vicuna, and had belonged to Alan Caine.
Outside the external door Gulliver, looking like a huge pear, muffled in a vicuna coat, used two hands to hold a massive umbrella over his chief.
He wore clothes a Terran history buff would favor for the visit: scrape, jacket and trousers of imitation llama and vicuna, and rope-soled sandals.
The story is about a former judge on the planet Vicuna, two and a half galaxies away from Earth, who has had to leave his body behind and whose soul goes flying through space, looking for a habitable planet and a new body to occupy.
He says that back on Vicuna the people could don and doff their bodies as easily as Earthlings could change their clothing.
They had no musical instruments on Vicuna, he said, since the people themselves were music when they floated around without their bodies.
Then there is the wild vicuna, the fleece of which is made into a sort of wool, after which a certain kind of cloth is named.
He had had to leave everything behind then, his books, his collection of ancient scientific instruments, his pre-Columbian ceramics, his rack of Italian-made suits and fine vicuna coats, his pipes, his cello, his family albums, his greenhouse full of orchids, even his dogs.
The cut on his forehead had been neatly patched over, and either the vicuna coat had been cleaned or he was wearing a new one.
He looked smaller without his vicuna overcoat, but snakes can come in all sizes and still pack enough poison to kill.
Surire Park was not the nature preserve of the woolly vicunas and viscachas he had read about.
Why should they think such things, when they had always had around them four-legged beasts of burden such as llamas and alpacas and vicunas, unless they had been encouraged and inflamed to think differently?
Were they wild beasts from the Pampas, or herds of llamas and vicunas?
Surire Park was not the nature preserve of the woolly vicunas and viscachas he had read about.