The animal on the right is a culpe0 (Lycalopex culpaeus) and the animal on the left is a guanaco (Lama guanicoe).
Llamas are derived from guanacoes, though they do have some alpaca blood in them. Alpacas are derived from the vicuña (Vicugna vicugna).
The wild South American camels evolved with canid predation. Culpeos and chillas (L. griseus) often try to attack their offspring.
During the Pleistocene, these camels also suffered from predation from dire wolves.
Because they have evolved with some much predation from canids, they have evolved a certain amount of antipathy toward anything that looks like a dog.
This hatred is a great asset when one uses a llama to guard sheep from coyotes and stray dogs.
It’s not so useful when the llamas won’t let the family dogs cross a pasture.
So that’s why the occoasiona llama is sometimes kept with sheep here in England, well maybe. Breeding llamas seems to be a profitable sidleine for some small farmers.
Alpacas are the ones that are worth a lot of money. Their fleece, which is essentially domesticated vicuna wool, is among the softest and finest in the world.
Yes of course, the ones we see in the local farmers fields are in fact alpacas not llamas. The farmer just up the road breeds them and all the locals, including us, go and admire the youngsters.
It is certainly a good documentation on why S. American animals DO respond to dogs — a lot of times people presume that if the wolf isn’t present the animals won’t respond to them.
But is this so different from the evolutionary experience of other livestock (sheep, horses, cattle)? One finds aggressive protection in donkeys (burros) and mules — so it may be simply a case that these animals are more aggressive in fighting off predators than other livestock rather than that they have a unique evolutionary background in fighting off canid predators.
I couldn’t find a good example of dog & llama, although there were some text discussions of using llamas and LGDs in combination. However, I found some samples for alpacas (one herding and one LGD) — http://www.kurrawa.com.au/info.php?subject=workdog
and
http://www.sonic.net/~cdlcruz/GPCC/AlpacaFamilyFarmDog.html
All of those animals evolved with some predation from wolves and other large canids, Dholes, Xenocyon, etc.
I’ve found that horses’, donkeys’ and mules’ response to dogs is usually predicated on how a given dog acts toward or around them. My neighbors have both horses and donkeys and my dog Sammie gets on w/ them famously. (Her goats, on the other hand, want nothing to do with him.) Yet one of my neighbors’ friends has a terrier who has to be penned in the car because my neighbor’s equids react so strongly to him.
Likewise, years back, when we owned horses, they and our Saint Bernards played w/ each other on a daily basis. But these same horses detested a neighbors’ English Setter.