The camelids are a family of similar species (even if they come from far flung places). It consists of 2 species from South America: the Alpaca (and their domesticated descendants, along with 2 species of Camel- though here, with the camel, this is the domesticated species (their wild ancestors, which originated in north America, went extinct around 10,000-12,000 years ago – along with much of the other mega fauna of the USA (sabre toothed big cats, masterdoms (relatives of the elephant)  Mammoths, and even giant ground sloths. Before being lost, the camel crossed the bering strait bridge of land, and spread through Asia. The Dromedary has not occurred in the wild for around 2000 years, but it is a great deal longer, since there were large numbers. However, while the Bactrian camel was also domesticated, the wild relatives of this species do still survive in the wild – around 1000 still cling on in the Gobi desert. However, there are around 2 million that are living in domesticated situations, and so called conservation areas (well out side their native range). The last census of dromedary camels, put the world population at around 35.5 million.

When it comes to the South American Camelids. The Llama (there are around 3.2 million Llamas in the world) is descendant of the Guanaco (there used to be around 50 million of this species, but there still remains 600,000 (though it should be noted that this is just over 1% of the initial population. Also the Vicuana (350,000 mature adults in the wild, so an entire population must be over half a million) is the wild ancestor of the Alpaca (there are just over 3 milliion Alpacas in the world, but these are all domesticated).