By Mike Safley
The Spaniard, Cieza de Leon, made the first written record of alpaca and llama colors in 1553. The Indian herds of Chile and Bolivia that graze the altiplano still exhibit all the colors found in that original list. Today, the herds owned by Julio Barreda and the big Peruvian cooperatives are primarily white; the smaller Quechua herds of Peru still contain all the colors, but tend to be populated by light-colored alpacas.
Genetically, there are two basic alpaca colors: red and black. The original South American camelids, vicuñas and guanacos were reddish-fawn. Since alpacas are the descendants of these two species, the base color of alpacas is most likely reddish-fawn. Guanacos have both gray and black colors around their heads and this is probably the source of the black gene in alpacas. White is simply the absence of any of these colors. Read more.