Re: Proof of the Mesorah

Y. Goldiner (ygold7@u.washington.edu)
Wed, 9 Oct 1996 21:44:03 -0700 (PDT)

In TF #78 Rabbi Menken wrote:
>>3) What happened to the llama? Are you really going to convince someone
>> that it is a type of camel?

> You need a biologist for this one. Apparently Rabbi Noach Weinberg once
> visited a zoo, and was troubled to notice that the hippopotamus was
> described as having... a cloven hoof! However, he then noticed that
> biologists have classified the hippo in the pig family. I am not making
> this up; it's a pig. An extremely large pig, but a pig. Somehow it seems
> less difficult to group the llama and camel together than a hippo and
> piglet.

According to the Encarta Encyclopedia, both camels and llamas are rumiants,
and both belong to the family Camelidae.

Yehudis