Yes. Sometimes.
Most of them don’t like to, but after all it is their defence and other than being a bit repulsive and smelly, it is much better that being bitten or kicked.
On this day, Socorra was being shorn for the first time and was not impressed.
After she had spat a few times, a whole ball of cud came up which you can see in her mouth. You can probably imagine what the next spit is going to be like.
The following sequence is taken from a video and shows how quickly they can spit and how it can spread. It is simply chewed up grass, brought up from her cud, but it is not exactly pleasant to smell. The six photos below cover a period of approximately a quarter of a second.
Socorra has always been a spitter. She is usually pretty calm but when she is being brushed or shorn, she is going to let you know that she is not happy about it.
You can see the spit just starting in her mouth.
As soon as the ears go back down her neck, you can expect a blast of green cud. This was a fraction of a second after the photo above.
There is no time to duck. You can see how quickly the spit spreads.
By now any llama or person directly in front of her would be covered.
I can feel the spit hitting my shirt now and I am thinking that I really should have used the telephoto lens!
It is all over in a quarter of a second except that she is going to have the taste in her mouth for an hour or so now.
The cud is just dripping out of her mouth at this point and the chute that she was in had to be hosed out.
QuickTime Movie of the above sequence plus another spitting movie
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