Llamas have the potential to save the world, but how? Simply by pooping. As strange as it may sound, a new scientific study has revealed that llama poop is quite nutritious for the soil and can replenish the nutrients needed for plants to thrive.
For three years, a group of scientists collaborated with farmers who cared for llamas in the Cordillera Blanca. During their three-year study, they discovered that raising llamas in an area of the Andes left barren by glaciers helped replenish soil nutrients and increase the overall number of plants.
Llama poop is known as a llama bean and it contains nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen
Scientific Reports, a peer-reviewed journal, published the findings.
Llama poop is known as a llama bean, and it contains all of the nutrients, such as carbon and nitrogen. Carbon and nitrogen are both required to make soil habitable for life. It also contains seeds from plants on which the animals grazed.
“No such experiment has been done like this in these areas and at this altitude,” Anas Zimmer, a geographer and lead author of the paper, said in a University of Texas press release.
Though this is the first time that such a study with llamas has proven scientifically that their waste is good for the soil, it has been a practice for a long time.
Llamas have been raised around the glaciers of the Andes since the Incan Empire ruled the region.
Indigenous farmers have recently continued llama husbandry in the Andes. That’s why Zimmer and her colleagues collaborated with the Llama 2000 Asociación, a group of local farmers.
The farmers assisted the researchers in establishing eight fenced-in areas and distributing llamas to half of them. The herders then kept an eye on them and cared for them, ensuring that the plots remained separate.
According to the National Water Authority, Peru has lost more than half of its glacial surface in the last 50 years. Climate change was to blame.
As these glaciers continue to melt due to humans’ unsustainable use of natural resources, we must save what remains.
When glaciers melt, the soil trapped beneath them becomes devoid of nutrients. According to EOS, it could take hundreds of years for the soil to become fertile on its own.
According to Zimmer in the UT press release, reseeding plant life can help with many of these issues. Raising llamas in these areas, she says, “might help to ameliorate the destructive processes of global warming-induced deglaciation while benefiting the local economy.”