Well that is sandy to know
FAB CAMEL FACTS FOR FANS TO CHEW OVER
ROWDY camels outside the England football team’s hotel could leave players with the hump during the World Cup, as we reported yesterday.
A pair of the bellowing desertdwelling creatures live in a fenced off pen near the Three Lions’ Souq Al Wakra Hotel base in Qatar, sparking fears they could give our boys sleepless nights.
But how much do you know about them? JAMES MOORE dusts down 15 sandy facts…
1 A camel with one hump is a dromedary, while the twohumped species are Bactrian camels. There are wild Bactrians in China, and camels are actually cousins of llamas.
2 Domesticated for at least 4,000 years, each animal can carry 600lbs, travel 30 miles a day and are dubbed “ships of the desert” due to their swaying style of walk.
3 It’s a myth their humps store water. It’s actually fat – up to 80lbs of the stuff, which helps them survive for months without food.
4 They can drink up to 26 gallons of water in 10 minutes, but most of it is stored in their bloodstream. Camels only start sweating when temperatures reach 42C.
5 The beasts have sealable nostrils to stop sand getting in during storms, plus three sets of eyelids and two rows of eyelashes to keep the stuff out.
6 Worldwide there are 14million camels, with herds even found in Australia. They typically grow up to 7ft in height, weigh 1,500lbs and can live up to 50 years.
7 Their coats help reflect sunlight, while thick pads on their chest, knees and toes – they don’t have hooves – help them sit on hot sand. Camels can sleep standing up.
8 Thick leathery lips help them eat thorny plants such as cactus. They are herbivores but will chew on bones. Camels fart a lot, each producing 100 pounds of methane annually.
9 Angry camels spit a combination of saliva and stomach juice. But if one camel likes another they will blow in its face.
10 Camels can run at 40mph and racing is big in Qatar and other countries. The largest race involved more than 1,000 of them.
11 The creatures mate sitting down. Males fight for the right to mate with females and inflate sacs inside their throats to attract them.
12 Mothers carry their young for up to 14 months and babies are born without their trademark humps.
13 Arabic has 160 words for camel. In the Bible Jesus famously said: “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.”
14 They’ve long been used in war. There was once a British Imperial Camel Corps. But Lawrence of Arabia, who led the Arab revolt in World War One, hated them.
15 Camel milk has more vitamin C than cow’s, and camel meat is high in protein and is reckoned to taste a bit like beef. Matt “Coco” Hancock ate a camel penis on I’m A Celeb.