Llamas and the Andes
Page 1
Dear Reader,
Did you know there’s a Magic Tree House® book for every kid? From those just starting to read chapter books to more experienced readers, Magic Tree House® has something for everyone, including science, sports, geography, wildlife, history…and always a bit of mystery and magic!
Happy reading!
When I write Magic Tree House® adventures, I love including facts about the times and places Jack and Annie visit. But when readers finish these adventures, I want them to learn even more. So that’s why we write a series of nonfiction books that are companions to the fiction titles in the Magic Tree House® series. We call these books Fact Trackers because we love to track the facts! Whether we’re researching dinosaurs, pyramids, Pilgrims, sea monsters, or cobras, we’re always amazed at how wondrous and surprising the real world is. We want you to experience the same wonder we do—so get out your pencils and notebooks and hit the trail with us. You can be a Magic Tree House® Fact Tracker, too!
Here’s what kids, parents, and teachers have to say about the Magic Tree House® Fact Trackers:
“They are so good. I can’t wait for the next one. All I can say for now is prepare to be amazed!” —Alexander N.
“I have read every Magic Tree House book there is. The [Fact Trackers] are a thrilling way to get more information about the special events in the story.” —John R.
“These are fascinating nonfiction books that enhance the magical time-traveling adventures of Jack and Annie. I love these books, especially American Revolution. I was learning so much, and I didn’t even know it!” —Tori Beth S.
“[They] are an excellent ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at what the [Magic Tree House fiction] has started in your imagination! You can’t buy one without the other; they are such a complement to one another.” —Erika N., mom
“Magic Tree House [Fact Trackers] took my children on a journey from Frog Creek, Pennsylvania, to so many significant historical events! The detailed manuals are a remarkable addition to the classic fiction Magic Tree House books we adore!” —Jenny S., mom
“[They] are very useful tools in my classroom, as they allow for students to be part of the planning process. Together, we find facts in the [Fact Trackers] to extend the learning introduced in the fictional companions. Researching and planning classroom activities, such as our class Olympics based on facts found in Ancient Greece and the Olympics, help create a genuine love for learning!” —Paula H., teacher
Text copyright © 2020 by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce
Interior illustrations copyright © 2020 by Penguin Random House LLC
Cover photograph by mcjeff/shutterstock, used under license from Shutterstock
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. The Jack and Annie icons that appear throughout this book were first published in Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #1: Dinosaurs by Random House Children’s Books in 2000. Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #1: Dinosaurs illustrations copyright © 2000 by Sal Murdocca.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Magic Tree House is a registered trademark of Mary Pope Osborne; used under license.
The Magic Tree House Fact Tracker series was formerly known as the Magic Tree House Research Guide series.
Visit us on the Web!
MagicTreeHouse.com
rhcbooks.com
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Osborne, Mary Pope, author. | Boyce, Natalie Pope, author. | Monés, Isidre, illustrator.
Title: Llamas and the Andes: a nonfiction companion to Magic Tree House #34, late lunch with llamas / by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce; illustrated by Isidre Monés.
Description: New York: Random House Children’s Books, [2020] | Series: Magic Tree House fact tracker | “A Stepping Stone book.” | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019029714 | ISBN 978-1-9848-9323-9 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-9848-9324-6 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-9848-9325-3 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Llamas—Andes—Juvenile literature. | Animals—Andes—Juvenile literature. | Incas—Juvenile literature. | Andes—History—Juvenile literature.
Classification: LCC SF401.L6 O83 2020 | DDC 636.2/966—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781984893253
This book has been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System.
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
Penguin Random House LLC supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to publish books for every reader.
a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
For Ben Corbett and Emily Kasten
Historical Consultant:
R. ALAN COVEY, PhD, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin
Scientific Consultant:
DEEANN M. REEDER, PhD, Department of Biology, Bucknell University
Education Consultant:
HEIDI JOHNSON, language acquisition and science education specialist, Bisbee, Arizona
Special thanks to the Random House team: Mallory Loehr, Jenna Lettice, Isidre Monés, Polo Orozco, Jason Zamajtuk, and endless thanks to Diane Landolf, who is the best editor anywhere
1. Llamas and the Andes
2. Llamas
3. Animals of the Andes
4. The Incas
5. Machu Picchu
6. The Old and New
Doing More Research
Bibliography
Dear Readers,
In Late Lunch with Llamas, we rescued a baby llama named Cria, who belonged to a boy in the Andes Mountains. We learned a lot about llamas and the Andes.
Did you know that the Andes are the second-tallest mountain range in the world? They run through parts of South America for about 4,500 miles.
Llamas have been an important part of life in the Andes for thousands of years. In fact, people in the Andes probably wouldn’t have survived without them. Llamas carried heavy loads up and down the mountains for them and still do today. This is just one important way that llamas helped them, but there are many, many more!
So let’s put on our hiking boots and head for the Andes. You won’t believe all the fantastic sights you’ll see there!
It’s hard to think of the Andes Mountains without llamas (LAH-muzz). People have raised them in these spectacular mountains for thousands of years. Today llamas are all over the world, but millions still live high in the Andes.
The Andes are a chain of mountains stretching along the western coast of South America. They cover about 4,500 miles through seven countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
The Andes began forming about 30 million years ago. They are the longest mountain range in the world and in some places are over 400 miles wide! Except for the Himalayas, they are also the highest. These beautiful mountains have different kinds of weather and landforms. There are deep valleys, high deserts, flat p
lains, and snowcapped peaks.
The tallest mountain in the chain is Aconcagua (ah-kon-KAH-gwah), at 22,841 feet.
There are three major regions in the Andes. The southern section is in Argentina and Chile. The central Andes run through parts of Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. And the northern Andes are in Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.
The Ojos (OH-hohs) del Salado is over 22,000 feet high and is one of 150 active volcanoes in the Andes.
The southern region is rainy and cool, but the central region is dry. There’s rain in the north, but because it’s closer to the equator, the temperatures there are warm.
Glaciers
The Andes have deserts, but they also have glaciers. Some on the border of Argentina and Chile look like icy rivers. For thousands of years, the glaciers have inched down the mountains, carving out valleys and high, flat plains as they go.
Plains like this one in Peru are large, flat areas of land.
Every year, water from the glaciers flows east into the Amazon River. The river begins high in the mountains of Peru and runs over 4,000 miles through the Amazon rain forest into the Atlantic Ocean.
The Nile, in Africa, is the only river that is longer than the Amazon.
Cloud Forests
There are rain forests in the Andes. And high in the mountains of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru are cloud forests, where the trees are always covered in clouds.
Cloud forests form when warm, wet air from the Amazon rain forest moves up the mountains. The air cools as it gets higher and then condenses, or changes into clouds.
This cloud forest is part of Manú National Park, in Peru.
Trees in a misty cloud forest look like something from a fairy tale. Drops of water called fog drip trickle down to the ground from the leaves. The earth is so damp that soft mosses thrive on the dark forest floor.
Plants and Animals of the Cloud Forest
Many unusual animals and plants live in Andean cloud forests. People have spotted over 300 different kinds of birds.
Animals such as the spectacled bear, long-whiskered owlet, and yellow-tailed woolly monkey are just some of the fascinating and rare creatures living in the cloud forests.
Mountain tapirs are relatives of horses and rhinos.
Different kinds of ferns, including tree ferns, are everywhere. Thousands of colorful orchids and many other plant species also thrive in this beautiful world of fog, trees, and waterfalls.
Other Plants in the Andes
There are 30,000 to 40,000 species of plants in the Andes! Cacti, orchids, and twenty-foot aloe plants are just a few of them.
There are 200 different kinds of orchids in the cloud forests.
The Cinchona (sin-CHO-nuh) is a small but very important tree. People grind up its bark to make quinine (KWY-nine), a medicine that treats people with malaria all over the world.
Malaria is a disease that causes high fever, chills, and sometimes death. It is carried by some mosquitoes.
There are strange and wonderful plants like the frailejones (fry-lay-HOH-nezz) in Colombia. They look like small palm trees.
Frailejones are in the sunflower family.
And if you like ferns, there are 1,500 different kinds. And 1,200 kinds of moss!
Minerals
The Andes are rich in minerals. In fact, they have some of the largest deposits of copper, silver, tin, zinc, and gold in the world. The first explorers from Spain were there to mine for gold and other minerals.
Spanish explorers arrived in the Andes in the early 1500s.
People are still mining today. Chile has the largest gold mines in South America. Experts think there are at least 13,000 tons of gold yet to be found!
Many of the mines are in the southern Andes.
Breathing in the Thin Air
Because the Andes are so high, breathing can be difficult. At above 8,000 feet, the air doesn’t hold much oxygen. Gravity pulls the oxygen down toward the earth’s surface.
Air in the high mountains has about 40 percent less oxygen.
Without enough oxygen, people can get headaches and feel very tired. They might be dizzy and sick to their stomachs. If they become short of breath, it’s important to get to a lower altitude as soon as possible.
Mountain climbers move slowly up the mountains so their bodies can adjust to the lack of oxygen.
Native people in the Andes have adapted to handle the lack of oxygen. Their red blood cells are larger and hold more oxygen than most other people’s. They have larger chests, hearts, and lungs so they can breathe more deeply.
The Atacama Desert lies along the western edge of the Andes. In 2011, men working on a road there uncovered some strange bones…a lot of them! Scientists visited the site and found they were the fossils of whales and other sea creatures. They were about 5 million years old!
Researchers wanted to know how these fossils got so far from the ocean. They discovered that whole groups of animals probably died from eating toxic algae.
Their dead bodies washed up onshore and lay buried in sand. Over the years, the bones became fossils. As the mountains grew higher, they pushed the fossils up about 130 feet, and they wound up in the Atacama Desert!
Llamas are camelids, meaning they come from the camel family. Camelids first appeared in North America millions of years ago.
About 2 million to 3 million years ago, some camelids crossed a land bridge that linked North America to Europe and Asia.
Today relatives of these early camels live in Africa and Asia.
As some camelids were crossing the land bridge, others began to make their way down to South America. Llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas come from this group.
The Four Camelids of the Andes
There are four kinds of camelids that live in the Andes: guanacos, vicuñas, llamas, and alpacas. They are all adapted to live high in the mountains. Their chests, hearts, and lungs are large. They have more red blood cells than other animals. Their thick coats keep them warm in the cold mountain air.
The vicuña is the national animal of Peru.
Llamas and Alpacas
Guanacos and vicuñas are wild animals. But over 6,000 years ago, people in the Andes began taming some of them. Over time, those became llamas and alpacas. Llamas come from guanacos, and alpacas come from vicuñas. People grew to depend on these animals for survival.
Early people in the Andes had not yet invented the wheel. They carried things from one place to another on their backs. Some of them realized that they could train llamas as pack animals to carry their heavy loads.
Llamas can carry 50 to 75 pounds. Alpacas are not strong enough to carry heavy loads.
The native people made their clothes, blankets, ropes, and rugs from llama and alpaca wool. Their sturdy leather sandals came from llama hides. Llama and alpaca meat added protein to their diets.
People in South America still eat llama meat.
Andeans dried llama and alpaca dung and burned it in fires for cooking and warmth. The dung also made excellent fertilizer that helped crops grow well in the poor mountain soil. Llama and alpaca dung is especially good fertilizer for growing corn at very high altitudes.
Llama fat was made into candles.
How to Spot a Llama
Llamas can be over six feet tall and weigh about 400 pounds. Their long, banana-shaped ears stand straight up, and their hearing is excellent.
Many predators have eyes that focus straight ahead. Animals that are their prey, such as llamas, often have wide-set eyes. Large eyes on either side of their head give llamas a wide view of what’s happening around them.
Llamas come in different colors. The most common are brown with yellow or white spots, but they can also be black, gray, and white.
Llama wool is tough and strong. It’s great for making rugs, warm clothes, blankets, and ropes.
> Llamas in the Andes are usually sheared, or shaved, once a year.
Great Feet!
Like most animals living in the mountains, llamas have special ways of dealing with the environment. They are able to move easily up and down the rocky mountainsides. Instead of having hooves like goats or horses, llamas have feet with two toes on each foot. Wide pads, much like a dog’s, cover the bottom of them. The pads make it possible for the llamas to feel the ground under their feet.
Because llamas have soft feet, they don’t damage the soil or plants as cattle do.
Diet
Llamas don’t need as much water as cattle and sheep. Much of the water they get comes from the grass and shrubs that make up their diet.