Wildlife of Patagonia

Guanacos! These funny animals (Lama guanicoe) are the relatives of llamas and alpacas, and they belong to the same family as camels. They are everywhere!

We saw a ton of these duck-ish birds. I tried hard to get a good picture so I could upload it to this species identification app I use. After all that trouble, the app said "it's a bird." Yeah, thanks, app. A visit to the natural history museum showed me that this darling is in fact a male Upland Goose (Chloephaga picta), also called Caiquén.

My first thought when I saw these birds was "emu," but I knew I was on the wrong continent. Instead, these are rheas! Also called ñandus, they are the South American equivalent of emus or ostriches. The species in Patagonia is Rhea pennata.

We visited a rocky intertidal site, and I was excited to see blue mussels! These are Mytilus chilensis, a close relative of the species I'm familiar with from the northern hemisphere. Just like their boreal brethren, M. chilensis like settling in clusters in the mid-intertidal zone!

Unlike at home, the limpets in Patagonia are HUGE! This chonker is called Maucho or Nacella magellanica, and the shell was just as long as my wrist is wide. For reference, North American limpets are about the size of my fingernail. Limpets play a key role in the intertidal ecosystem by grazing algae.

A happy Patagonian intertidal community - barnacles, mauchos (limpets), and blue mussels. The classical intertidal zonation that I know from the northern hemisphere is not quite as strong here, or maybe it's just that the zones are compressed - there's not a lot of distance from the barnacle zone to the mussel zone to the red algae zone to the kelp forest. I want to figure out why that is!