Tuesday, July 11, 2006

1 hump or 2

I see lots of camels on the drive from the Crowne Plaza to the base everyday. All the camels I see have one hump. It seems their are two species of camels, Dromedary (1 hump) and Bactrain (2 humps). There are some photos of camels on this blogspot in earlier posts. The Bactrain camel was first domesticated some 5,000 years ago in Iran. They were used as pack anamimals, and domestication eventually spread along the Silk Road (see earlier blog post) to China and to southern Russia. The Dromedaries (1 hump) were first domesticated by Semitic cultures and later bacame popular in the Arab world. Dromedaries are found in arid regions from northwestern India to the Arabian Peninsula and Smalia and across the African deserts. Camels remain the desert nomad's primary source of transportation, milk, meat and wool. In Kuwait and Saudi Arabia they are also used as racing animals. Oh by the way the humps are filled with fat not water which allows the camel to go a week without food or water.

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