What are Camelids?
Camelids are a family of even-toed ungulates which separated from their closest relatives, ruminates (cattle, antelopes, goats, etc.), and suines (pigs, peccaries, and hippos) about 47 million years ago, during the middle Eocene. Though they are not true ruminates (they do not chew a cud), camelids have a three-chambered stomach (rather than the ruminates’ four-chambered stomach) and unlike suines, they are strictly herbivorous. Camelids include camels, dromedaries, llamas, alpacas, vicunas, and gaunacos. As some of the earliest mammals to evolve multi-chambered stomachs, camelids represent the evolutionary trend towards adaptation to grasslands and away from woodlands. An event contemporaneous with the evolution of camelids, the Azolla event, caused worldwide carbon dioxide levels to increase rapidly, which initiated global cooling and glaciation at the Poles. This, in turn, killed off most of the tropical and subtropical forests that had dominated the planet during the Mesozoic, and
