50 Fun Facts About Camel

What does a camel actually store in its hump?

The fat is a calorie reserve; the animal keeps its water in its bloodstream, not the hump.

How many humps does a dromedary have?

Dromedaries make up about 94 percent of the world's camels; the two-humped Bactrian accounts for the rest.

How many living species of true camel are there?

The dromedary, the domestic Bactrian, and the critically endangered wild Bactrian of the Gobi.

Roughly what share of the world's camels are one-humped dromedaries?

Two-humped Bactrians make up only about 6 percent.

Roughly how much water can a thirsty dromedary drink in one go?

That is around 30 imperial gallons, taken into the bloodstream rather than the hump.

How often can a dromedary go without drinking, even in very hot conditions?

It can shed up to 30 percent of its body mass to dehydration and recover.

Unlike other mammals, a camel's red blood cells are what shape?

The shape lets blood keep flowing during dehydration and survive the flood of water when the camel drinks.

A camel's body temperature can swing between roughly 34°C at dawn and what by sunset?

Letting its temperature climb means it hardly needs to sweat during the day.

What is the translucent third eyelid that a camel uses to sweep sand from its eye called?

Long lashes and closable nostrils complete the sandstorm defences.

How many chambers does a camel's stomach have?

Camels chew the cud even though they are not classed as true ruminants, which have four chambers.

What is the average lifespan of a camel?

That is longer than a horse and about the same as a chimpanzee.

What top speed can a camel reach in a short burst?

They can sustain around 40 km/h, which is why camel racing is a serious sport in the Gulf.

What is the dulla, the inflatable organ a male dromedary extrudes from his mouth in the rutting season?

He inflates it to assert dominance and attract females; camelids are also the only ungulates that mate sitting down.

On which continent did camels originally evolve?

They crossed the Bering land bridge into Asia about six million years ago and later died out in their homeland.

Which four South American animals belong to the camel family, Camelidae?

The New World and Old World branches split roughly eleven million years ago.

The word dromedary comes from a Greek word meaning what?

Dromas kamelos was literally the "running camel", and the English word dates from the 14th century.

The two-humped Bactrian camel is named after an ancient region in which part of the world?

Its tolerance for cold and altitude made it the workhorse of the Silk Road caravans.

The wild Bactrian camel is the only large mammal known to survive on water saltier than what?

Fewer than a thousand remain in the Gobi and Lop Nur deserts of China and Mongolia.

Which country is home to the world's largest population of feral camels?

They were imported as pack animals in the 19th century; a 2008 estimate put the herd at over a million.

What was the name of the sole survivor of the first camel shipment to Adelaide in 1840?

He later shifted while his owner John Horrocks was reloading a gun, earning Horrocks the epitaph "the man who was shot by his own camel".

Which ill-fated 1860 expedition across the Australian interior was the first major one to rely on camels?

The cameleers who came with the animals from Karachi became known, not always accurately, as "Afghans".

Which future Confederate president championed the Army's Camel Corps as Secretary of War?

Congress voted $30,000 for the experiment in 1855; the Civil War killed it off.

The U.S. Army's first shipload of 34 camels was landed in 1856 at Indianola, in which state?

They were marched to Camp Verde via San Antonio; the last one was reportedly seen in Arizona in 1891.

Besides two Australian battalions and one British, the Imperial Camel Corps had one from where?

The brigade fought in Sinai, Palestine and the Arab Revolt.

Since the 2000s, what has largely replaced child jockeys in Gulf camel racing?

The UAE and Qatar banned underage jockeys after human-rights complaints.

Camel wrestling, in which two rutting males grapple, is most associated with which country?

The sport is strongest in the Aegean region and is usually staged in mating season with a female led past the pair.

The Pushkar Camel Fair is held every autumn in which Indian state?

It runs through the Hindu month of Kartik and features a longest-moustache contest alongside the livestock trading.

Which two countries produced 64 percent of the world's camel milk in 2017?

Desert nomads can live for a month on nothing but camel milk, which is easy to turn into yogurt but hard to make into butter.

The desert creature nicknamed the camel spider, subject of many urban legends, is really what?

They belong to the order Solifugae, cannot spin silk, and are essentially harmless to humans.

The cama, first born in Dubai in 1998, is a hybrid of a dromedary and which animal?

Breeders wanted a strong, cooperative animal that produced more wool than a llama.

Which camel-family member is Peru's national animal and yields the world's most expensive natural fibre?

Under the Inca only royalty could wear its wool; today the animal is still shorn only every three years.

Jesus said it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for whom to enter the kingdom of God?

The saying appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and a similar image is found in the Qur'an.

The First World War fighter plane called the Sopwith Camel got its nickname from a hump covering what?

Camel pilots were credited with 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied fighter.

R. J. Reynolds launched Camel cigarettes in 1913 using which tobacco to imitate fashionable Egyptian brands?

He sold 425 million packs within a year, and Winston-Salem is still nicknamed "Camel City".

Old Joe, the model for the original Camel cigarette pack dromedary, came from which circus?

Decades later the cartoon Joe Camel was retired in 1997 after research showed the ads appealed to children.

Land Rovers in "sandglow" yellow were the signature vehicles of which off-road competition, 1980-2000?

Sometimes called the Olympics of 4x4, it began with three German teams in Jeeps crossing the Amazon.

The 1970s prog band Camel, known for the album The Snow Goose, was formed in which English town?

Guitarist Andrew Latimer has led the group since 1971.

In programming, writing words together with internal capitals, as in iPhone or eBay, is called what?

The formal term is medial capitals; the humps of the capital letters give it its animal name.

A camel's dried dung is useful to desert travellers because it can be used immediately for what?

The animal's kidneys are so efficient that its urine comes out as a thick syrup.

How much of its body weight in water can a camel lose and survive?

Losing that much would cause circulatory failure in almost any other animal.

Camelops, the Ice Age camel of the American West, died out roughly how many years ago?

It vanished with the mammoths and sabre-tooth cats, and butchered bones suggest early humans hunted it.

Which camel can carry the heaviest load, around 400 to 450 kg?

The one-humped hybrid stands taller than either parent, with a dent dividing its hump front from back.

How many pairs of chromosomes does a camel have?

A 2007 study found the karyotype made up of one metacentric, three submetacentric and 32 acrocentric autosomes.

Roughly how long ago did New World and Old World camelids diverge?

Despite that split, camels and llamas can still be crossed to produce the cama.

Camel bones found in the Timna Valley, among the earliest domestic camel remains outside Arabia, date to about when?

The finding was widely reported as evidence that the patriarchal Bible stories were written down after that date.

How many camels were disqualified from the 2018 King Abdulaziz Camel Festival beauty contest for Botox injections?

The Saudi pageant carries $57 million in prize money; more than 40 camels were thrown out in 2021.

Which Roman emperor is recorded as having enjoyed eating camel's heel?

Ancient Greek writers also record whole roast camel at Persian banquets.

A 2005 Saudi–CDC report linked four human cases of bubonic plague to eating what?

Camel blood is itself drunk with milk by pastoralists in northern Kenya as a source of iron and salts.

Why is camel meat not kosher under Jewish law?

An animal must meet both criteria; the camel meets only one.

Roughly how many critically endangered wild Bactrian camels survive in the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts?

It is the world's only truly wild camel and is not ancestral to the domestic Bactrian.