Camel

The genus Camelus covers three species of large ruminating hoofed mammals of arid Africa and Asia: the one-humped dromedary and the two-humped domestic and wild Bactrian camels. The dromedary, also called the Arabian camel, exists today only as a domesticated animal, and about 90 percent of the world's camels are dromedaries. Camels belong to the camelid group along with the South American llamas, alpacas, guanacos and vicunas, and three camel species survive today under domestication or in the wild.

The camels of the Old World are placed in the family Camelidae, which also contains the llamas, alpacas, guanacos and vicunas of South America. The living Old World forms are the dromedary, Camelus dromedarius, and the Bactrian camel, Camelus bactrianus, together with the wild camel, Camelus ferus. The two domesticated species are distinguished most simply by the hump: the dromedary carries a single hump, the Bactrian two.

Camelids are the only plantigrade or fully digitigrade ungulates, a trait reflected in their grouping in the infraorder Tylopoda, meaning padded foot. The family ranges back in time to the upper Eocene and is first known from North America. The Old World camels are much larger than their South American relatives.

The camel is a large-bodied animal, and its build is best understood through a small set of measurements that hold across the group. Length runs to about 3 metres (10 feet) in all three species, while height reaches about 2 metres (6.6 feet) at the hump, the hump itself accounting for about 20 cm (8 inches) of that total. Males weigh between 400 and 650 kg (900 to 1,400 lb), with females about 10 percent smaller.^{1Camel (genus Camelus) · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗}

Despite this bulk, the camel is capable of sudden speed: in short bursts at a gallop it can reach 65 km (40 miles) per hour.^{1Camel (genus Camelus) · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗} Its working life is correspondingly long, with a lifespan of about 40 to 50 years.^{5Camelus dromedarius (dromedary camel) · Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology ↗}

The camel's hump stores fat rather than water, and that fat is converted to energy when food and water are scarce. A camel can go a week or more without water, and it can last for several months without food. Water economy is equally specialised: the animal tolerates water loss up to 30 percent of bodyweight, produces thick syrupy urine and dry faeces, and relies on nasal mucous membranes to reabsorb moisture from exhaled air. After a long drink it rehydrates within minutes, absorbing over 100 litres (25 gallons) within 5 to 10 minutes of drinking — a sudden dilution that would burst the red blood cells of cattle but not the viscous membranes of camel erythrocytes. Body temperature fluctuates through the day from 34 to 41.7 degrees Celsius, limiting the need to sweat, and a camel can let its body temperature rise to 41 degrees Celsius before sweating at all, cutting heat gain and water loss by as much as two-thirds. The arrangement of arteries and veins in the camel helps mitigate the high blood temperature of the body before it reaches the brain, protecting the animal from potential brain damage.

Physical protection comes from leathery heat-resistant pads on the feet, knees, elbows and sternum, and from the lack of a stifle fold, which allows air to circulate beneath the body. Dromedaries are protected by a double row of eyelashes and nostrils that close during sandstorms, while thickened lips allow the animal to feed on coarse thorny plants. Digestion follows a ruminant-like pattern: food swallowed by a camel ferments in the rumen and is regurgitated as cud for a second chewing, but because camels lack the typical four-chambered stomach of cattle they are called pseudoruminants.

The camel is a browser rather than a grazer, taking fibre-rich thorny plants, dry grasses and saltbush, and feeding on shrubs and forbs that may make up as much as 70 percent of its diet. Roughly 8 to 12 hours of each day are given to feeding. Its salt requirement is exceptional, six to eight times that of other animals, and about a third of its food intake comes from halophytic plants.

The capacity to tolerate so heavy a salt load without hypertension is linked to multiple copies of the CYP2J genes. Genomic evidence further points to enhanced energy and fat metabolism, water reservation, salt metabolism, osmoregulation and sodium reabsorption.

Camels carry their young for a gestation of 12 to 14 months, and the result is usually a single calf. In Bactrian camels the interval is longer still, lasting 360 to 440 days and yielding one or two calves. Those calves are born weighing about 37 kilograms and are fully mobile within the first day.

The newborn camel is quick to rise: within half an hour of birth it can walk beside its mother, and its future humps are already visible as small peaks of hide topped with curls of hair.

The Bactrian camel carries hair reaching up to 255 millimetres in length, denser on the head, neck, humps, forelegs and tail, and sheds it as the seasons turn. This shaggy coat is grown for the freezing Gobi winters and discarded in summer, an adaptation that accompanies tolerance of temperatures from minus 29 to 49 degrees Celsius.

Bactrian camels migrate to the Gobi desert steppe during the snowy winter months and move back to the desert when the snow melts in spring.

The dromedary was perhaps introduced from Arabia into Egypt in the 9th century BCE and reached the rest of North Africa not before the 5th century BCE, becoming common there only by the 4th century CE.

From the 8th century CE Moroccans bred camels on a huge scale and crossed dromedaries with Bactrian camels, producing both fast-running messenger camels and heavier load carriers.

The Encyclopedia of Ancient History credits the camel with long-distance travel of about 48 kilometres a day and a carrying capacity of 240 kilograms, against roughly 60 kilograms for horses, donkeys and mules.

Camel racing is generally limited to the dromedary, whose name derives from the Greek verb dramein, meaning to run. For most of its history it remained an informal folk sport, and only in the final three decades of the 20th century did it begin to be organised formally along the lines of Thoroughbred horse racing.

Racing camels start their careers at two or three years of age and race until eight or nine, with courses from about 4 kilometres for younger animals to 10 kilometres for older ones.

Camelids sustain the livelihoods of millions of households across more than 90 countries, with a particular concentration among Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Their contribution is recognized as important to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals concerned with hunger, extreme poverty, the empowerment of women and the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems.

In the camel milk system supplying Nairobi, 94 percent of the milk was traded informally without effective regulation, while 6 percent came from a formal processing company. Traders, most of them women, occupy a pivotal position in these informal chains. Food safety risks identified along the chain include the absence of a cold chain, hygiene gaps at farms and markets, consumption of raw milk, and insufficient food safety training.

In recent decades the wild camel has been recorded in only three areas: the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang, the Kumtagh Desert region, and Great Gobi A Specially Protected Area in south-west Mongolia together with adjacent border areas. The species was assessed as Endangered in 2025 under criterion C1, on the basis of much less than 2,500 mature individuals and a projected reduction of at least 20 percent over two generations. That assessment took account of pressures including climate change, hybridisation, fragmentation and mining.

The Wild Camel Protection Foundation runs breeding centres for the wild camel in Mongolia, covering the salaries of a manager, a herdsman and a vet as part of protecting the species' unique genetic make-up.

Camels were first introduced into Australia in 1840 from the Canary Islands, and more than one million feral camels now live there, a population that may double every nine years.

Feral camels have a low rate of increase, with females usually giving birth to one young every second year, but they are long lived, up to 50 years, and have few mortality factors besides human intervention.

Feral camel management falls into fencing, live harvest for commercial sale and culling; in the Northern Territory aerial shooting is considered the most effective and humane way to cull large feral herbivores in remote areas.

In a controlled trial nineteen male camels were divided into control, dehydrated and rehydrated groups, with water restriction over 20 days followed by 72 hours of rehydration for the rehydrated group. Severely dehydrated camels lost body weight, passed very hard faeces and only a few drops of concentrated urine, and were slightly stressed, feeding poorly. Camels are adapted to combat dehydration stress and anorexia by increasing anti-stressors and modulating genes involved in fat metabolism.

• upper Eocene
  First appearance of Camelidae
  Camelidae first appears in North America.
• 4000 BCE
  Bactrian domestication
  The Bactrian camel was domesticated in the steppes of Central Asia. ^{1Camel (genus Camelus) · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗}
• 3000 to 2000 BCE
  Dromedary domestication
  The dromedary was domesticated in Arabia. ^{1Camel (genus Camelus) · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗}
• 9th century BCE
  Dromedary perhaps introduced into Egypt
  The dromedary was perhaps introduced from Arabia into Egypt. ^{9The Camel Caravans of the Ancient Sahara · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 5th century BCE
  Dromedary reaches the rest of North Africa
  The dromedary reached the rest of North Africa not before this century. ^{9The Camel Caravans of the Ancient Sahara · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 4th century CE
  Dromedary becomes common in North Africa
  The dromedary became common in North Africa only by this century. ^{9The Camel Caravans of the Ancient Sahara · World History Encyclopedia ↗}
• 7th century CE
  Origins of camel racing
  Camel racing originates on the Arabian Peninsula.
• 8th century CE
  Moroccan large-scale breeding and crossing
  Large-scale breeding in Morocco and crossing of the dromedary with the Bactrian camel.
• 1840
  First camels introduced into Australia
  First camels introduced into Australia from the Canary Islands.
• 1840 to 1907
  Camel imports into Australia from India
  Between 10,000 and 20,000 camels imported into Australia from India.
• 1980s
  Wild camel listed as Vulnerable
  The wild camel was listed as Vulnerable on the Red List.
• 1996
  Wild camel listed as Endangered
  The wild camel was listed as Endangered.
• 2002, 2007, 2008
  Wild camel listed as Critically Endangered
  The wild camel was listed as Critically Endangered in 2002 and again in 2007 and 2008.
• 2001
  Global camel population
  Global camel population recorded at 22 million heads.
• 2017
  International Year of Camelids approved
  UN General Assembly approval of the International Year of Camelids.
• 2020
  Camel racing inscribed by UNESCO
  Inscription of camel racing on UNESCO's Representative List.
• 2021
  Global camel population
  Global camel population recorded at 39 million heads.
• 2023
  ICZN ruling on the wild species name
  ICZN ruling on the wild species name.
• December 2023
  FAO launch of the International Year of Camelids 2024
  FAO launch of the International Year of Camelids 2024 in Rome.
• 2025
  Wild camel assessed as Endangered
  The wild camel was assessed as Endangered under criterion C1.
• 2021 to the 2050s
  Projected habitat loss
  Projected 44 percent loss of suitable wild camel habitat in the main part of the range. ^{7Camelus ferus (Wild Camel), The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2025: e.T63543A50197851 · International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ↗}

The FAO officially launched the International Year of Camelids 2024 at its Rome headquarters in December 2023 to celebrate the animals' contributions to livelihoods, food security and nutrition.

Camel racing, a social practice and festive heritage associated with camels, was inscribed in 2020 on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Omani and Emirati communities, long associated with camel breeding and Bedouin culture, share the heritage sport of camel racing, which continues to prosper as an element of intangible cultural heritage in both nations.