Camel: photos and general information
Many animals have learned to adapt to difficult environmental conditions. In particular, to acute moisture deficiency. The most striking example is camels, or “ships of the desert,” as they are also called.
These mammals are able to stay in hot and dry climates for a long time without losing their ability to work. How do they do this? And why are camels humpbacked? The answers to these questions, by the way, are interrelated. But more on that a little later. First, let's get to know this amazing animal in general terms.
The camel is a fairly large mammal from the order of artiodactyls. It lives in deserts, semi-deserts and dry steppes of Asia and Africa. In captivity (for example, in zoos) it is also found in the temperate zone. The average weight of an adult animal is 600-800 kg, height at the withers is up to two meters. Fur color is brown or reddish-gray. Camels were domesticated 4 thousand years ago. Since then, they have been actively used by humans to transport goods and passengers.
Maximum amount of liquid to drink
Observations of a camel that did not drink in hot, dry weather showed that its weight decreased by 100 kg in 8 days.
When he was finally given water, he drank 103 liters in 10 minutes.
This ability to lose weight could be the envy of many who want to lose extra pounds. The problem is that a person cannot survive without water in hot weather for more than 3 days.
After a long break, a dromedary can drink 10 buckets (about 130 liters). But livestock specialists recommend first giving a small amount of water to drink, and only when the initial thirst is quenched, allowing them to drink to their heart's content.
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The most interesting facts about camels
- A camel has 38 teeth.
- These animals are excellent meteorologists. They can figure out the area where it will rain soon.
- All camels are excellent swimmers, although in life they rarely manage to demonstrate this talent.
- A camel can cover enormous distances in a day (up to 80-100 km).
- The largest population of these animals is recorded in Somalia - 7.7 million individuals.
- One camel is capable of carrying a weight that is equal to half its body weight.
- In some countries, camel meat and milk are consumed.
- Camel racing is held annually in the United Arab Emirates.
- The average lifespan of one camel is 45 years.
Why does a camel need humps?
Now let's move on to the main question of our article. So, why does a camel need humps? What function do they perform?
As you probably already guessed, it is the humps that help the camel survive for a long time without water and food. They, like a gas tank in a car, feed the animal during long journeys through the lifeless desert. But don’t think that these unusual growths on the back contain water. In fact, a camel's humps are filled with fat, the oxidation of which produces water. It nourishes the animal's body.
The famous writer Rudyard Kipling answers the question “why does a camel have humps?” in his own way. In one of his tales, he describes the camel as an incredibly lazy animal. And for this idleness, the almighty Genie “rewarded” him with a hump, uttering the following words: “This is because you have been absent for three days. Now you can work for three days without any food.” Of course, this is just a children's story.
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Dromedary and Bactria can be hybridized and the hybrid will be fertile rather than sterile. This hybrid is called nar (iner). The bunk has two fused humps on its back.
Also, there are hybrids of a dromedary camel and a llama. It is called kama. Due to the discrepancy between the sizes of the animals, such a hybrid can only be born through artificial insemination.
Cams are very hardy animals with short ears and long tails. It is worth noting that they do not have a hump.
One-humped and two-humped camels
There are two varieties of these mammals:
- Bactrian camels (or Bactrians).
- Dromedary camels (or dromedaries).
The first ones live in Central Asia. Bactrians are well adapted to an arid and sharply continental climate, which is characterized by hot summers and cold winters. In addition to two humps, they also differ from dromedaries in having thicker and longer body hair.
Dromedary camels are common in North Africa and Southwest Asia. Unlike Bactrians, there are no wild populations of this species left today. Only in the deserts of the central part of Australia can you find reintroduced representatives of dromedaries - descendants of those individuals that were brought to this distant continent at the end of the 19th century. Dromedars also differ from Bactrians in having longer and slimmer legs.
Why do some camels have two humps, while others have only one? Scientists cannot yet answer this question. It is known that Mother Nature originally intended exactly two humps. But then in some individuals of the genus they merged into one. Thus, one-humpedness is a later evolutionary acquisition. However, why the camels needed it is unknown.
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There are about 17 million camels in the world. Today they are mostly domesticated animals and are virtually never found in the wild.
As for dromedaries (one-humped), they are not found in the wild. Bactrians (bactrians) can still be found in the wild in the Gobi Desert (located between the People's Republic of China and Mongolia), but their population is on the verge of extinction. In total, there are about 1,000 Bactrians living in the wild.
How long can a camel go without water?
How long do you think a camel can live without water? The answer is impressive: up to 15 days. And without solid food - about a month. True, after this the camel will need several days of rest and proper nutrition. In addition, after such a long hunger strike, an animal can drink up to one hundred liters of water at a time!
By the way, by the appearance of the hump you can determine how long its owner has been starving. So, in a well-fed and watered camel, the growth on the back stands straight, while in an exhausted camel, it hangs to the side. The fact is that camel humps lack bones and joints. Therefore, when an animal’s fat reserves dry up, its humps decrease in size and sag.
Thus, a camel can live without water for several weeks. And without significant harm to your health. Not only humps help him with this, but also other opportunistic “life hacks”. For example:
- Camels control their breathing rate to minimize water loss from the body.
- Thick fur protects the animal’s body from both scorching heat and night cold.
- Liquid is also stored in special water-bearing sacs in the stomach, which further helps the camel fight dehydration.
- The moisture exhaled from the camel's nostrils is retained in special sinuses and then enters the mouth.
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After the animal drinks water, it is evenly distributed throughout the body. The average body water content of camels is very low, especially when compared to other animals. For example, cow tissue contains approximately 80% water. The tissues of a donkey (another desert animal) contain about 65% water. But in a camel it is only 50%. But it is worth noting that a camel traveling through the desert for 24 hours loses only 2% of its body weight, while donkeys lose as much as 8%.
Nutritional Features
What does a camel eat? This is another interesting question worth answering. Camels are ruminants. In their natural habitat, the diet of these animals includes over 50 different plant species. Most often they eat camel thorn, wormwood, saxaul, barnyard grass, parenfolia, solyanka, and sand acacia. Once in an oasis, a camel is not averse to eating succulent reed shoots or tree leaves.
The stomach of camels is perfectly adapted to digesting rough and prickly food. It consists of several sections: rumen, abomasum and mesh with cellular folds. The walls of the first two sections are covered with a layer of rough epithelium. Food first passes through the esophagus into the rumen, where it is crushed. It is then regurgitated back into the mouth, chewed again, and returned to the rumen. Only after this, well-chopped food enters the stomach mesh, where it begins to be digested.
In captivity, camels are usually fed hay, branches and oats, and sometimes vegetables and buckwheat. “Domestic” camels are also given salt bars, as these animals need a constant source of rock salt.
