Alpaca gets mirror for company after pen mates die

Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest alpaca of them all?

An alpaca has been given mirrors to help it feel less lonely after two alpacas it shared a pen with died of old age.

Giovanni, an 18-year-old alpaca, lives at Screech Owl Sanctuary & Animal Park in Saint Columb, Cornwall.

Gary Zammit, operations director at the park, said the animal was "in need of a special treat" and "a sense that there's somebody else around".

The park appealed for people to donate mirrors, and said it was a short-term solution.

Zammit added: "We just wanted to get some mirrors up as a temporary situation just to help him feel a little bit less isolated."

He said normally three alpacas were in a pen at one time but two had died shortly after one another.

The operations director said a regular visitor to the sanctuary would be donating two female alpacas to keep Giovanni company.

"We've just got to do some planning because obviously you can't just take animals from anywhere and add them to a collection of this size," he said.

"You need to look at things like quarantining them.

"We would hopefully be looking at picking them up as soon as possible, and then hopefully quarantine, once all the tests are done, [it] won't take long at all."

Zammit said after the appeal for mirrors on social media, he now had "plenty".

He added: "He seems quite happy seeing his reflection.

"He's been pretty good but it's even better when he's got that there so he can see another alpaca as far as he, hopefully, thinks in the paddock with him."

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