Feeding Finesse
In contrast to most grazing animals like sheep or cattle, alpacas have developed a unique and precise way of feeding. While other grazers use their tongues to wrap around grass and pull it into their mouths, alpacas rarely stick out their tongues at all. Instead, they rely on their mobile, highly sensitive split upper lip to select exactly which plants they want to eat.
Think of their lips as precise botanical tweezers: each half of the split lip can move independently, allowing alpacas to carefully sort through vegetation and pick out the most nutritious plants. This selective feeding approach is complemented by their prehensile upper lip and special dental arrangement – they have a toothless upper fibrous pad instead of upper front teeth, which creates a unique wrap-around stripping mechanism for grazing and browsing.
This precision feeding isn’t just interesting – it’s ecologically important. By being selective about what they eat and how they remove vegetation, alpacas can get the nutrition they need while minimizing damage to plant communities. They don’t pull plants out by the roots or graze vegetation down to bare soil like some other livestock might. Even more interesting, their specialized feeding anatomy means they can’t use salt licks like other livestock do – they simply aren’t equipped to stick out their tongues and lick!
Here’s a video where you can see in detail how they don’t use their lips when eating: