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| SCIENTIFIC
CLASSIFICATION |
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| COMMON
NAME: |
dromedary
camel |
| KINGDOM: |
Animalia |
| PHYLUM: |
Chordata |
| CLASS: |
Mammalia |
| ORDER: |
Artiodactyla |
| FAMILY: |
Bovidae |
| GENUS
SPECIES: |
Camelus
(camel) dromedarius (running) |
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| DESCRIPTION: |
Woolly
coat, caramel in color that often looks shaggy from
seasonal shedding. Both sexes have a single hump
on the back. |
| MALE |
Males
are considerably larger than females and have an
inflatable soft palate which they use to attract
females. (It looks like a frog's throat when inflated.) |
|
| SIZE: |
1.8-2.3
m (5.8-7.5 ft.) tall at shoulder |
|
| WEIGHT: |
300-690
kg (661-1521 lb.) |
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| DIET: |
Almost
any vegetation they can find |
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| SEXUAL
MATURITY: |
|
| MALE |
At
5 years |
| FEMALE |
At 3-4 years |
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| RANGE: |
Middle
East and northern Africa; introduced to Australia
and Namibia |
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| POPULATION: |
GLOBAL |
No
data |
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| STATUS: |
IUCN |
Not
listed |
| CITES |
Not
listed |
| USFWS |
Not
listed |
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| 1. |
The
dromedary camel is capable of drinking 100 L (30
gal.) of water in just 10 minutes.
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| 2. |
Camels
store fat in the hump, not water! In fact baby camels
are born without a hump because the layer of fat
does not develop until they eat solid food. |
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| 3. |
Unlike
most mammals, a healthy camel's body temperature
fluctuates throughout the day from 34°C-41.7°C
(93°F-107°F.) This fluctuation is important
because it allows the camel to conserve water by
not sweating as the environmental temperature rises. |
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| 4. |
The
dromedary camel is no longer considered a wild animal.
In Africa and Arabia it is a semi-domesticated animal
that free ranges but is under the control of herders. |
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| One
of the reasons a camel is well adapted to live in
the desert is because of its feeding behavior. It
selects only a few leaves from each plant. A camel
is also capable of eating parts of the foliage that
other species do not, such as the thorns of the
acacia tree. Foraging herds of camels will spread
over a large area so that they do not eat all of
the vegetation. These selective styles of feeding
reduce the stress on the plant life and avoids competition
between camels and other arid region herbivores.
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| |
|
|
| Al-Saihati,
Abdul-Wahed A. "The Ship of the Desert."
Zooculturist, Vol. 5 No. 3, Winter 1992. |
| |
| Katz,
D. "Keeping Camels Down on the Farm",
Science, September 1982, pp. 79-80. |
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| Kingdom,
J. East African Mammals: Large Mammals. Vol.
IIIB. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
pp. 280-293. |
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| Nowak,
R.M. (ed.). Walker's Mammals of the World.
Vol. II. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
1991. |
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| Parker,
S.P. (ed.) Grzimek's Encyclopedia: Mammals.
Vol. 5. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989. pp. 82-95. |
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| Schmidt-Nielsen,
Knut. Desert Animals, Physiological Problems
of Heat and Water. New York: Dover Publications
Inc., 1979. |
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