Camel Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This camel trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and starts with the myths (no, the hump is not full of water) and works through the astonishing biology that lets a dromedary go ten days without a drink, drink 140 litres in one sitting and survive on water saltier than the sea. From there it heads into history: the U.S. Army's camel experiment, Australia's million feral camels, the Imperial Camel Corps, and the Silk Road Bactrians. The last stretch is for the pub quiz crowd: the plane, the cigarette, the prog band and the programming style that all borrowed the camel's name, plus the animals of the camel family that live in the Andes. It suits animal lovers, geography and science classrooms, and anyone building a themed round. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source, so the facts will stand up to the sharpest zoologist at your table.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does a camel actually store in its hump?
Fat
Fat: the hump is an energy store, and as a hungry camel burns through it the hump shrinks and can flop over to one side until the animal feeds again.
Q 02Camels can close which part of the body to keep out blowing sand?
Their nostrils
Their nostrils: a camel pinches them shut at the onset of a sandstorm, while a double row of long eyelashes keeps the grit out of its eyes.
Q 03Camelopard, an old English name combining camel and leopard, referred to which animal?
Giraffe
Giraffe: to the ancient Greeks it looked like a camel wearing a leopard's spots, a label that lives on in the species name camelopardalis.
Q 04When a camel 'spits' at something that bothers it, what is it mostly throwing?
Stomach contents
Stomach contents: the camel brings up part of its last meal and hurls it out along with saliva, a defence meant to startle or distract whatever is threatening it.
Q 05Roughly how much water can a thirsty dromedary drink in one go?
About 140 litres
About 140 litres: a camel can lose a quarter or more of its body weight to dehydration, then make up the loss in a single drinking session lasting around 13 minutes.
Q 06Cyrus the Great put camels in his front line to panic the horses of which famously rich king?
Croesus
Croesus: Herodotus says horses cannot bear the sight or smell of camels, so the Lydian cavalry turned back and Cyrus went on to capture Sardis.
Q 07Unlike most mammals, a camel's red blood cells are what shape?
Oval
Oval: the shape lets the cells keep circulating even when the camel is dehydrated.
Q 08What does a camel let climb on a hot day so it barely sweats?
Body temperature
Body temperature: a camel starts the day at about 34°C and lets itself warm to 40°C or more by evening, then sheds the heat in the cool of night instead of sweating water away.
Q 09What is the translucent third eyelid that a camel uses to sweep sand from its eye called?
The nictitating membrane
The nictitating membrane: it sweeps grit off the eyeball, and because it is see-through a camel can keep it closed and still find its way through a sandstorm.
Q 10Which author's Just So Stories tell how the camel got his hump as a punishment for refusing to work?
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling: his idle camel answers every request with 'Humph!', until a djinn turns the word into a hump that lets him work three days without eating.
Q 11What is a baby camel called?
Calf
Calf: a camel mother leaves the herd to give birth, her calf is on its feet within about half an hour, and the pair rejoin the others around two weeks later.
Q 12In GEICO's viral 2013 ad, a camel strolls through an office cheering that it is Hump Day, meaning which day?
Wednesday
Wednesday: it is the hump in the middle of the working week, and once you are over it the run down to the weekend begins, which is why the camel is so pleased with himself.
Q 13Why does a dromedary sometimes blow a pink, balloon-like sac out of the side of its mouth?
To attract females
To attract females: the sac is the dulla, part of a male's soft palate, which he inflates in the mating season until it hangs from his mouth like a swollen pink tongue.
Q 21Which ill-fated 1860 expedition across the Australian interior was the first major one to rely on camels?
Burke and Wills
Burke and Wills: they set out with over two dozen imported camels, and the leaders died on the way back after reaching their Cooper Creek depot hours after it was abandoned.
Q 22Which Secretary of War, later a leading Confederate, persuaded Congress to fund the US Army's Camel Corps in 1855?
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis: he won $30,000 from Congress for the experiment, which worked well enough in trials, but it collapsed when the Civil War came and he left to lead the other side.
Q 23The U.S. Army's first shipload of camels was landed in 1856 at Indianola, in which state?
Texas
Q 14The camel family first evolved, and later died out, on which continent?
North America
North America: the camel family arose there tens of millions of years ago, and only the branches that had crossed land bridges into Asia and South America survived.
Q 15Which four South American animals belong to the camel family, Camelidae?
Llama, alpaca, guanaco and vicuña
Llama, alpaca, guanaco and vicuña: the guanaco and vicuña still run wild in the Andes, while the llama and alpaca exist only as domestic animals bred by Andean peoples.
Q 16Dromedary shares its Greek root with the word hippodrome: what does that root mean?
Running
Running: Greek dromas kamelos meant 'running camel', at first a swift riding breed that compared with a baggage camel as a racehorse does with a carthorse.
Q 17The two-humped Bactrian camel is named after an ancient region in which part of the world?
Central Asia
Central Asia: Bactria lay south of the Oxus river in what is now Afghanistan and its neighbours, and its camels grow a shaggy coat for winters of minus 29°C, then shed it when summer comes.
Q 18Wild Bactrian camels went on breeding in China's Lop Nur desert while it was being used for what?
Nuclear tests
Nuclear tests: China began exploding bombs at Lop Nur in 1964, yet the camels, which can drink salt water no other large mammal tolerates, carried on breeding regardless.
Q 19Which country is home to the world's largest population of feral camels?
Australia
Australia: camels were shipped in to haul freight across the outback, their descendants went wild, and the country now even exports live camels and camel meat, some of it to the Middle East.
Q 20Which New Testament preacher wore clothes of camel's hair and lived on locusts and wild honey?
John the Baptist
John the Baptist: dressed in camel's hair with a leather belt, he preached in the Judean wilderness and baptised the crowds who came out to him in the River Jordan.
Texas: the herd was marched inland to Camp Verde, and after the Civil War the Army auctioned its camels off, while others were simply turned loose on the range.
Q 24Besides Australians and Britons, which country's soldiers formed two companies of the Imperial Camel Corps?
New Zealand
New Zealand: the cameliers rode to battle but fought on foot, and a bronze trooper on a camel in London's Victoria Embankment Gardens still honours the corps's dead.
Q 25Since the 2000s, what has largely replaced child jockeys in Gulf camel racing?
Remote-controlled robots
Remote-controlled robots: after Qatar and the UAE banned child riders, owners strapped on small whip-wielding robots and worked them by remote from cars driving alongside the race.
Q 26Camel wrestling, in which two rutting males grapple, is most associated with which country?
Turkey
Turkey: the sport is strongest along the country's Aegean coast, where a female in heat is led past two males in the mating season to set them shoving.
Q 27The Pushkar Camel Fair is held every autumn in which Indian state?
Rajasthan
Rajasthan: the fair builds to the Kartik full moon, when Hindu pilgrims gather at Pushkar's sacred lake, and its sideshows include a longest-moustache contest.
Q 28Which traditional nickname do camels owe to carrying people and cargo across the sands?
Ships of the desert
Ships of the desert: a loaded camel can walk 20 miles or more a day through waterless country, so for centuries desert trade moved on its back.
Q 29Camel spiders belong to an order whose Latin name means those that flee from what?
The sun
The sun: the order is Solifugae, and the legend that they chase people has it backwards, since they are only after the shade a person casts and pose no real danger.
Q 30The cama, first born in Dubai in 1998, is a hybrid of a dromedary and which animal?
A llama
A llama: breeders hoped for a camel's strength with a sweeter nature, but Rama, the first cama, grew up with no hump and, by one report, a filthy temper.