Western Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva). Young female cones open for pollination. Patriarch Grove. Ancient Bristlecone Forest. Inyo National Forest. Mono Co., Calif.

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

The Eastern Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis) is a species of bat from the Vespertilionidae family. See also the Desert red bat (Lasiurus blossevillii), a related species.

 

Eastern red bats are widespread across eastern North America, with additional records in Bermuda. It is also scarce but widespread throughout many of the Bahamian islands. This is a medium-sized Vespertilionid, averaging weights of 9.5-14 g and measurements of 112.3 mm in total length. Adults are usually dimorphic: males have red hair while females are chestnut-colored with whitish frosting on the tips of the fur.

 

Like most Vespertilionids, eastern red bats are insectivorous. Moths (Lepidoptera) form the majority of the diet, but red bats also prey heavily on beetles (Coleoptera), flies (Diptera), and other insects. Echolocation calls have low minimum frequencies, but calls are highly variable ranging from (35-50 kHz). Eastern red bats are best suited for foraging in open spaces due to their body size, wing shape, and echolocation call structure. However, red bats are frequently captured by researches foraging over narrow streams and roads

 

Mating likely occurs in late summer or autumn and the sperm is stored in the female's reproductive tract until spring when ovulation and fertilization occurs. In June, females usually give birth to three or four young and then roost with their young until they are weaned. Males roost alone throughout the Summer. High temperature demands associated with gestation and rearing young may limit the northern range for reproductive females. Eastern red bats often roost amongst live or dead leaves on the branches of live hardwood trees, but have also been found using loblolly pine trees in pine plantations.

 

In late summer, eastern red bats from the northern parts of the range may migrate south for the winter, although little is known about migration routes or overwintering range. In winter, red bats forage for insects on warm nights and even warm days. On warm days during the winter, red bats enter torpor while roosting in the canopy of hardwood or coniferous trees, but during cold bouts they crawl underneath dead leaf litter on the ground and use their furred tail as a blanket.

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Thank you very much for visiting, your faves and comments. Cheers.

 

Echidnas /ɨˈkɪdnə/, sometimes known as spiny anteaters, belong to the family Tachyglossidae in the monotreme order of egg-laying mammals. The four extant species, together with the platypus, are the only surviving members of that order and are the only extant mammals that lay eggs. Their diet consists of ants and termites, but they are not closely related to the true anteaters of the Americas. They live in Australia and New Guinea.

Description: Echidnas are small, solitary mammals covered with coarse hair and spines. Superficially, they resemble the anteaters of South America and other spiny mammals such as hedgehogs and porcupines. They are usually black or brown in colour. There have been several reports of 'albino' echidnas, their eyes pink and their spines white. They have elongated and slender snouts that function as both mouth and nose. Like the platypus, they are equipped with electrosensors, but while the platypus has 40,000 electroreceptors on its bill, the long-billed echidna has only 2,000, and the short-billed echidna, which lives in a drier environment, has no more than 400 located at the tip of its snout. They have very short, strong limbs with large claws, and are powerful diggers. Echidnas have tiny mouths and toothless jaws. The echidna feeds by tearing open soft logs, anthills and the like, and using its long, sticky tongue, which protrudes from its snout, to collect prey.

Diet: The short-beaked echidna's diet consists largely of ants and termites, while the Zaglossus species typically eats worms and insect larvae. They have no teeth, and break down their food by grinding it between the bottoms of their mouths and their tongues. The echidnas' ears are slits on the sides of their heads that are usually unseen due to the fact that they are blanketed by their spines. The external ear is called the "pinna", which is created by a large cartilaginous funnel, deep in the muscle.

Habitat: Echidnas do not enjoy extreme temperatures, and use caves and rock crevasses to hide from harsh weather conditions. Echidnas can be found in forests, woodlands, snuggled under vegetation, roots or piles of debris. They sometimes hide in other animal burrows, such as rabbits and wombats. Echidnas have large territories causing their areas to overlap. In addition, echidnas are decent swimmers. When swimming, echidnas expose their snout and some of their spines. They are known to journey their way to water in order to groom and bathe themselves. Long-beaked echidnas have sharp, tiny spines on their tongues that help capture their prey. The echidnas feces are 7 centimeters long and are cylindrical in shape; they are usually broken and unrounded. When eating they consume large amounts of dirt and ant hill material, which makes up majority of their feces.

Classification: Echidnas and the platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, known as monotremes. The neocortex makes up half of the echidna's brain, compared to 80% of a human brain. Due to their low metabolism and accompanying stress resistance, echidnas are long-lived for their size; the longest recorded lifespan for a captive echidna is 50 years, with anecdotal accounts of wild individuals reaching 45 years. Contrary to previous research, the echidna does enter REM sleep, but only when the ambient temperature is around 25 °C (77 °F). At temperatures of 15 °C (59 °F) and 28 °C (~82 °F), REM sleep is suppressed. The average lifespan of an echidna in the wild is estimated around 16 years. When fully grown a female can weigh up to 4.5 kilograms and a male can weigh up to 6 kilograms. You can determine the echidnas' sex by their size; males are 25% larger than females. As well, the reproductive organs differ even though both sexes have a single opening they use to urinate, release their faeces and use to mate. Male echidnas have non-venomous spurs on the hind feet.

Reproduction: The female lays a single soft-shelled, leathery egg 22 days after mating, and deposits it directly into her pouch. Hatching takes place after 10 days; the young echidna then sucks milk from the pores of the two milk patches (monotremes have no nipples) and remains in the pouch for 45 to 55 days, at which time it starts to develop spines. The mother digs a nursery burrow and deposits the young, returning every five days to suckle it until it is weaned at seven months. Male echidnas have a four-headed penis. During mating, the heads on one side "shut down" and do not grow in size; the other two are used to release semen into the female's two-branched reproductive tract. Each time it has sex, it alternates heads in sets of two. When not in use, the penis is retracted inside a preputial sac in the cloaca. The male echidna's penis is 7 centimeters long when erect, and its shaft is covered with penile spines. These may be used to induce ovulation in the female. It is a challenge to study the echidna in their natural habitat and they show no interest in mating while in captivity. Therefore, no one has ever seen an echidna ejaculate. There have been previous attempts, trying to force the echidna to ejaculate through the use of electrically stimulated ejaculation in order to obtain semen samples but has only resulted in the penis swelling. Breeding season begins in late June and extends through September. Males will form lines up to ten individuals long, the youngest echidna trailing last, that follow the female and attempt to mate. During a mating season an echidna may switch between lines. This is known as the "train" system. Two weeks after mating, a single fertilized egg, weighing 380 milligrams and being about 1.4 centimeters long, is implanted in a rear-facing pouch that has developed on the female, where it is held for ten days before hatching. The young echidna, called a puggle, is then held in the pouch for two to three months before being expelled. Puggles will stay within their mother's den for up to a year before leaving.

(Source: Wikipedia)

 

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A camel (from Latin: camelus and Greek: κάμηλος (kamēlos) from Ancient Semitic: gāmāl) is an even-toed ungulate in the genus Camelus that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. Camels have long been domesticated and, as livestock, they provide food (milk and meat) and textiles (fiber and felt from hair). Camels are working animals especially suited to their desert habitat and are a vital means of transport for passengers and cargo. There are three surviving species of camel. The one-humped dromedary makes up 94% of the world's camel population, and the two-humped Bactrian camel makes up 6%. The wild Bactrian camel is a separate species and is now critically endangered.

 

The word camel is also used informally in a wider sense, where the more correct term is "camelid", to include all seven species of the family Camelidae: the true camels (the above three species), along with the "New World" camelids: the llama, the alpaca, the guanaco, and the vicuña, which belong to the separate tribe Lamini. Camelids originated in North America during the Eocene, with the ancestor of modern camels, Paracamelus, migrating across the Bering land bridge into Asia during the late Miocene, around 6 million years ago.

 

Taxonomy

Extant species

Three species are extant:

 

ImageCommon nameScientific nameDistribution

Bactrian camelCamelus bactrianusDomesticated; Central Asia, including the historical region of Bactria.

Dromedary / Arabian camelCamelus dromedariusDomesticated; the Middle East, Sahara Desert, and South Asia; introduced to Australia

Wild Bactrian camelCamelus ferusRemote areas of northwest China and Mongolia

Biology

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult dromedary camel stands 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in) at the shoulder and 2.15 m (7 ft 1 in) at the hump. Bactrian camels can be a foot taller. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h (40 mph) in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h (25 mph). Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg (660 to 2,200 lb) and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg (660 to 1,320 lb). The widening toes on a camel's hoof provide supplemental grip for varying soil sediments.

 

The male dromedary camel has an organ called a dulla in his throat, a large, inflatable sac that he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of the camel's mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

Ecological and behavioral adaptations

  

Camel humps store fat, which are used as nourishment when food is scarce. If a camel uses the fat inside the hump, the hump will become limp and droop down

Camels do not directly store water in their humps; they are reservoirs of fatty tissue. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields a greater mass of water than that of the fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. The dromedary camel can drink as seldom as once every 10 days even under very hot conditions, and can lose up to 30% of its body mass due to dehydration. Unlike other mammals, camels' red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg (1,300 lb) camel can drink 200 L (53 US gal) of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other mammals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C (93 °F) at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C (104 °F) by sunset, before they cool off at night again. In general, to compare between camels and the other livestock, camels lose only 1.3 liters of fluid intake every day while the other livestock lose 20 to 40 liters per day. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C (120 °F). Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight in water, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

  

Domesticated camel calves lying in sternal recumbency, a position that aids heat loss

The camel's thick coat insulates it from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C (158 °F). Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their translucent third eyelid (also known as the nictitating membrane). The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camels' kidneys have a 1:4 cortex to medulla ratio. Thus, the medullary part of a camel's kidney occupies twice as much area as a cow's kidney. Secondly, renal corpuscles have a smaller diameter, which reduces surface area for filtration. These two major anatomical characteristics enable camels to conserve water and limit the volume of urine in extreme desert conditions. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel faeces are so dry that they do not require drying when used to fuel fires.

 

The camel immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs. Camels suffer from surra caused by Trypanosoma evansi wherever camels are domesticated in the world: 2  and resultantly camels have evolved trypanolytic antibodies as with many mammals. In the future, nanobody/single-domain antibody therapy will surpass natural camel antibodies by reaching locations currently unreachable due to natural antibodies' larger size.: 788  Such therapies may also be suitable for other mammals.: 788  Tran et al. 2009 provides a new reference test for surra (T. evansi) of camel. They use recombinant Invariant Surface Glycoprotein 75 (rISG75, an Invariant Surface Glycoprotein) and ELISA. The Tran test has high test specificity and appears likely to work just as well for T. evansi in other hosts, and for a pan-Trypanozoon test, which would also be useful for T. b. brucei, T. b. gambiense, T. b. rhodesiense, and T. equiperdum.

 

Genetics

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotype consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.

 

The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm (1.6–4.7 in) deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m (7 ft 1 in) at the shoulder and 2.32 m (7 ft 7 in) tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg (1,430 lb) and can carry around 400 to 450 kg (880 to 990 lb), which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can.

 

According to molecular data, the wild Bactrian camel (C. ferus) separated from the domestic Bactrian camel (C. bactrianus) about 1 million years ago. New World and Old World camelids diverged about 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can hybridize and produce viable offspring. The cama is a camel-llama hybrid bred by scientists to see how closely related the parent species are. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama is halfway in size between a camel and a llama and lacks a hump. It has ears intermediate between those of camels and llamas, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

Evolution

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene. The split between the tribes Camelini, which contains modern camels and Lamini, modern llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos, is estimated to have occurred over 16 million years ago.

 

The ancestor of modern camels, Paracamelus, migrated into Eurasia from North America via Beringia during the late Miocene, between 7.5 and 6.5 million years ago. During the Pleistocene, around 3 to 1 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America as part of the Great American Interchange via the newly formed Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals. Populations of Paracamelus continued to exist in the North American Arctic into the Early Pleistocene. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet (2.7 metres) tall. The Bactrian camel diverged from the dromedary about 1 million years ago, according to the fossil record.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna as part of the Quaternary extinction event, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia at the end of the Pleistocene, around 13–11,000 years ago.

 

Domestication

Like horses, camels originated in North America and eventually spread across Beringia to Asia. They survived in the Old World, and eventually humans domesticated them and spread them globally. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of the first indigenous peoples of the Americas from Asia into North America, 10 to 12,000 years ago; although fossils have never been associated with definitive evidence of hunting.

 

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Although feral populations exist in Australia, India and Kazakhstan, wild camels survive only in the wild Bactrian camel population of the Gobi Desert.

 

History

When humans first domesticated camels is disputed. Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia or South Arabia sometime during the 3rd millennium BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran. A study from 2016, which genotyped and used world-wide sequencing of modern and ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), suggested that they were initially domesticated in the southeast Arabian Peninsula, with the Bactrian type later being domesticated around Central Asia.

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that humans had domesticated the Bactrian camel by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, with the practice then moving into Mesopotamia. Heide suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel", while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan. Heide and Joris Peters reasserted that conclusion in their 2021 study on the subject.

 

In 2009-2013, excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones yet found in Israel or even outside the Arabian Peninsula, dating to around 930 BC. This garnered considerable media coverage, as it is strong evidence that the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Esau, and Joseph were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia—but not in the eastern Mediterranean lands—is not a new idea. The historian Richard Bulliet did not think that the occasional mention of camels in the Bible meant that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that time. The archaeologist William F. Albright, writing even earlier, saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism.

 

The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes:

 

The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant ... substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112–116; Jasmin 2005). This ... has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558–584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century [BC])

 

and concludes:

 

Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century [BC] and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region—attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I—raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade.

 

Textiles

Main article: Camel hair

Desert tribes and Mongolian nomads use camel hair for tents, yurts, clothing, bedding and accessories. Camels have outer guard hairs and soft inner down, and the fibers are sorted by color and age of the animal. The guard hairs can be felted for use as waterproof coats for the herdsmen, while the softer hair is used for premium goods. The fiber can be spun for use in weaving or made into yarns for hand knitting or crochet. Pure camel hair is recorded as being used for western garments from the 17th century onwards, and from the 19th century a mixture of wool and camel hair was used.

 

Military uses

Main article: Camel cavalry

By at least 1200 BC the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500 and 100 BC, Bactrian camels came into military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC the military Arabian saddle evolved, which again improved the saddle design slightly.

 

Military forces have used camel cavalries in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into the modern-day Border Security Force (BSF) of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first documented use of camel cavalries occurred in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

 

The East Roman Empire used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom the Romans recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close range (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra (547 BC).

 

19th and 20th centuries

A photo of Bulgarian military-transport camels in 1912

A camel caravan of the Bulgarian military during the First Balkan War, 1912

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, stationed in California, in the 19th century.[19] One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The Free French Camel Corps fought during World War II, and camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region. At the same period the Soviet units operating around Astrakhan in 1942 adopted local camels as draft animals due to shortage of trucks and horses, and kept them even after moving out of the area. Despite severe losses, some of these camels ended up as far west as to Berlin itself.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

21st century competition

At the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, in Saudi Arabia, thousands of camels are paraded and are judged on their lips and humps. The festival also features camel racing and camel milk tasting and has combined prize money of $57m (£40m). In 2018, 12 camels were disqualified from the beauty contest after it was discovered their owners had tried to improve their camel's good looks with injections of botox, into the animals' lips, noses and jaws. In 2021 over 40 camels were disqualified for acts of tampering and deception in beautifying camels.

 

Food uses

Dairy

Main article: Camel milk

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month.

 

Camel milk can readily be made into yogurt, but can only be made into butter if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet in the 1990s. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant.

 

Camels provide food in the form of meat and milk. Approximately 3.3 million camels and camelids are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide. A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg (661–882 lb), while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg (1,433 lb). The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg (550 and 770 lb). The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. On the other hand, camel milk and meat are rich in protein, vitamins, glycogen, and other nutrients making them essential in the diet of many people. From chemical composition to meat quality, the dromedary camel is the preferred breed for meat production. It does well even in arid areas due to its unusual physiological behaviors and characteristics, which include tolerance to extreme temperatures, radiation from the sun, water paucity, rugged landscape and low vegetation. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes tenderer the more it is cooked.

 

Camel is one of the animals that can be ritually slaughtered and divided into three portions (one for the home, one for extended family/social networks, and one for those who cannot afford to slaughter an animal themselves) for the qurban of Eid al-Adha.

 

The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. Specialist camel butchers provide expert cuts, with the hump considered the most popular.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel. Camel meat is mainly eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details four cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

Australia

Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs. Australia has exported camel meat, primarily to the Middle East but also to Europe and the US, for many years. The meat is very popular among East African Australians, such as Somalis, and other Australians have also been buying it. The feral nature of the animals means they produce a different type of meat to farmed camels in other parts of the world, and it is sought after because it is disease-free, and a unique genetic group. Demand is outstripping supply, and governments are being urged not to cull the camels, but redirect the cost of the cull into developing the market. Australia has seven camel dairies, which produce milk, cheese and skincare products in addition to meat.

 

Religion

Islam

Main article: Animals in Islam

Muslims consider camel meat halal (Arabic: حلال, 'allowed'). However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat. Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haram (Arabic: حرام, 'forbidden') for a Muslim to perform Salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of the Shaytan (Arabic: شيطان, 'Devil'). According to Abu Yusuf (d.798), the urine of camel may be used for medical treatment if necessary, but according to Abū Ḥanīfah, the drinking of camel urine is discouraged.

 

The Islamic texts contain several stories featuring camels. In the story of the people of Thamud, the prophet Salih miraculously brings forth a naqat (Arabic: ناقة, 'milch-camel') out of a rock. After the prophet Muhammad migrated from Mecca to Medina, he allowed his she-camel to roam there; the location where the camel stopped to rest determined the location where he would build his house in Medina.

 

Judaism

See also: Food and drink prohibitions

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves: "But these you shall not eat among those that bring up the cud and those that have a cloven hoof: the camel, because it brings up its cud, but does not have a [completely] cloven hoof; it is unclean for you."

 

Cultural depictions

What may be the oldest carvings of camels were discovered in 2018 in Saudi Arabia. They were analysed by researchers from several scientific disciplines and, in 2021, were estimated to be 7,000 to 8,000 years old. The dating of rock art is made difficult by the lack of organic material in the carvings that may be tested, so the researchers attempting to date them tested animal bones found associated with the carvings, assessed erosion patterns, and analysed tool marks in order to determine a correct date for the creation of the sculptures. This Neolithic dating would make the carvings significantly older than Stonehenge (5,000 years old) and the Egyptian pyramids at Giza (4,500 years old) and it predates estimates for the domestication of camels.

 

Distribution and numbers

A view into a canyon: many camels gathering around a watering hole

Camels in the Guelta d'Archei, in northeastern Chad

There are approximately 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

Over one million dromedary camels are estimated to be feral in Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year; it was estimated at around 700,000 in 2008. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwestern United States after having been imported in the 19th century as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and exported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The Wild Bactrian camel is a separate species and is the only truly wild (as opposed to feral) camel in the world. The wild camels are critically endangered and number approximately 1400, inhabiting the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in China and Mongolia.

Lions have very high copulation rates. The female may mate approximately every 15 minutes when she is in heat for three days and nights without sleeping, and sometimes with five different males. This often leads to physical exhaustion of males when only a one or two are involved. Males periodically sniff female reproductive organs for signs of oncoming estrus and if these signs are detected, they will follow a female until she is ready to mate. Females may signal their interest in mating with elaborate tail movements and by "walking sinuously past" a male. "Oral sex" occurs as foreplay-female lions may lick and rub the male's genitals. When African lion female has gotten the male's attention, she crouches into the mating position, her belly pressed to the ground and tail to one side, and copulation occurs for five to twenty seconds. During mating males often bite the female at the nape of her neck and the act often ends with the female snarling with bared teeth at the male. The penis of a lion, like all felines, has backward pointing barbs. In lions, copulation is often accompanied by snarling, biting, growling, and threats, and sometimes the female turns and swats the male during dismount (most likely as a result of the pain invoked by a barbed penis). It has been theorized that the pain inflicted upon the female, during withdrawal from her vagina, is neccesary to stimilate the female to ovulate. After a new group of males take over a pride, females usually increase their sexual activity while lowering their fertility rate.

For every cub that survives to yearling stage, lions copulate an estimated 3000 times. Only 1 estrus in 5 results in progeny and estrus lasts 4 days to a week, during which couples mate 2.2 times/hour. Either animal will initiate mating by rubbing heads or sniffing. The two literally sleep, mate, sleep, mate, sleep and mate again during this time. If females fail to conceive they will re-enter estrus approximately two weeks later and the cycle begins anew. The couple may mate hundreds of times over several days, but afterward, when they return to the pride, they show no special interest in each other. Surprisingly, coalition partners hardly ever fight over mating rights. The first to reach a female in heat becomes her consort—until and unless he has had enough. As partners are usually equals, fighting would impair their ability to withstand takeover attempts.

When a male cat opens his mouth and wrinkles his nose, it may mean he smells a receptive female. By smelling through a special organ in the roof of its mouth, a male cat senses when a female is ready to mate. This behavior is called flehmen. The special organ (the Jacobson's organ) is located just behind the front teeth and above the roof of the mouth. Two tiny openings in the palate allow the scented air to reach it. Nerves then carry the news to the olfactory part of the brain, where the scent is recognized. Domestic cats often demonstrate the same behavior when sniffing a territorial scent mark -- or sometimes when smelling catnip!

Taken from: www.catcollection.org/cat/lion/

 

Photographed in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, Kenya.

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

This is the flock of Rambouillet ewes that I worked with at Montana State University for my Master's thesis. I performed laparoscopies on all of them to count the number of eggs that they had ovulated. It was part of a long term experiment to select for improved lambing rate in Rambouillet sheep.

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Photo taken 1983 - digitally captured from paper print

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The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.

 

Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.

 

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.

 

The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.

 

Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.

 

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.

 

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.

 

TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS

The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.

 

Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.

 

HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY

The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).

 

Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

 

In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or

 

P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.

 

GENOMICS

The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.

 

The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.

 

Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.

 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.

 

Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.

 

Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.

 

Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.

 

DIET

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.

 

A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.

 

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

 

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.

 

SOCIAL LIFE

Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.

 

Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.

 

During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.

 

Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.

 

COMMUNICATION

Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.

 

NESTING

Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.

 

Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.

 

REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING

Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.

 

Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.

 

Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.

 

Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.

 

Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.

 

When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

INTELLIGENCE

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.

 

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.

 

TOOL USE AND CULTURE

Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).

 

Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.

 

Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.

 

In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.

 

POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES

A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.

 

During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

 

ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS

Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.

 

Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.

 

Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.

 

Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.

 

A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.

 

A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.

 

LEGAL STATUS

In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.

 

CONSERVATION

CONSERVATION STATUS

The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

 

The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.

 

Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.

 

Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.

 

During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.

 

Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.

 

CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS

A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

 

Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.

 

Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Basil

Scientific classification Edit this classification

Kingdom: Plantae

Clade: Tracheophytes

Clade: Angiosperms

Clade: Eudicots

Clade: Asterids

Order: Lamiales

Family: Lamiaceae

Genus: Ocimum

Species: O. basilicum

Binomial name

Ocimum basilicum

L.

 

Basil (/ˈbæzəl/,[1] also US: /ˈbeɪzəl/;[2] Ocimum basilicum /ˈɒsɪməm bəˈzɪlɪkəm/[3][4]), also called great basil, is a culinary herb of the family Lamiaceae (mints). It is a tender plant, and is used in cuisines worldwide. In Western cuisine, the generic term "basil" refers to the variety also known as sweet basil or Genovese basil. Basil is native to tropical regions from Central Africa to Southeast Asia.[5] In temperate climates basil is treated as an annual plant, however, basil can be grown as a short-lived perennial or biennial in warmer horticultural zones with tropical or Mediterranean climates.[5]

 

There are many varieties of basil including sweet basil, Thai basil (O. basilicum var. thyrsiflora), and Mrs. Burns' Lemon (O. basilicum var. citriodora). O. basilicum can cross-pollinate with other species of the Ocimum genus, producing hybrids such as lemon basil (O. × citriodorum) and African blue basil (O. × kilimandscharicum).

Description

Timelapse of growing basil

Desiccated basil showing seed dispersal

 

Basil is an annual, or sometimes perennial, herb used for its leaves. Depending on the variety, plants can reach heights of between 30 and 150 centimetres (1 and 5 feet).[6] Basil leaves are glossy and ovulate, with smooth or slightly toothed edges that typically cup slightly; the leaves are arranged oppositely along the square stems.[7] Leaves may be green or purple. Its flowers are small and white, and grow from a central inflorescence, or spike, that emerges from the central stem atop the plant.[citation needed] Unusual among Lamiaceae, the four stamens and the pistil are not pushed under the upper lip of the corolla, but lie over the inferior lip. After entomophilous pollination, the corolla falls off and four round achenes develop inside the bilabiate calyx.[citation needed]

Phytochemistry

 

The various basils have such distinct scents because the volatile aromatic compounds vary with cultivars.[5] The essential oil from European basil contains high concentrations of linalool and methyl chavicol (estragole), in a ratio of about 3:1.[5][8] Other constituents include: 1,8-cineole, eugenol, and myrcene, among others.[5][9] The clove scent of sweet basil is derived from eugenol.[10] The aroma profile of basil includes 1,8-cineole[11][12] and methyl eugenol.[11][13] In this species eugenol is synthesised from coniferyl acetate and NADPH.[14]

Similar species

 

Some similar species in the same genus may be commonly called "basil", although they are not varieties of Ocimum basilicum.

 

Camphor basil, African basil (O. kilimandscharicum)

Clove basil, also African basil (Ocimum gratissimum)[15][16]

Holy basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum, formerly known as O. sanctum)[17]

 

Taxonomy

Further information: List of basil cultivars

 

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The exact taxonomy of basil is uncertain due to the immense number of cultivars, its ready polymorphy, and frequent cross-pollination (resulting in new hybrids) with other members of the genus Ocimum and within the species. Ocimum basilicum has at least 60 varieties, which further complicates taxonomy.[5]

Cultivars

Thai basil growing at a school in Thailand

 

Most basils are cultivars of sweet basil. Most basil varieties have green leaves, but a few are purple, such as, 'Purple Delight'.

 

Anise basil, Licorice basil, or Persian basil (O. basilicum 'Liquorice')

Cinnamon basil (Ocimum basilicum 'Cinnamon')

Dark opal basil (Ocimum basilicum 'Dark Opal')

Genovese basil or Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum)

Greek basil (Ocimum basilicum var. minimum)

Globe basil, dwarf basil, French basil (Ocimum basilicum 'Minimum')[18]

Lettuce leaf basil (Ocimum basilicum 'Crispum')

Napolitano basil, also known as Napoletano basil, Neapolitan basil, Mammoth basil, Bolloso Napoletano basil, Napolitano Mammoth-Leafed basil, or Italian Large-Leaf basil (Ocimum basilicum)

Purple basil (Ocimum basilicum 'Purpurescens')

Rubin basil (Ocimum basilicum 'Rubin')

Thai basil (Ocimum basilicum thyrsifolium)

 

Hybrids

 

African blue basil (Ocimum basilicum × O. kilimandscharicum)

Lemon basil (Ocimum basilicum × O. americanum)[19][20]

Spice basil (Ocimum basilicum × O. americanum), which is sometimes sold as holy basil

 

Etymology

 

The name "basil" comes from the Latin basilius, and the Greek βασιλικόν φυτόν (basilikón phytón), meaning "royal/kingly plant", possibly because the plant was believed to have been used in production of royal perfumes.[21] Basil is likewise sometimes referred to in French as "l'herbe royale" ('the royal herb').[22] The Latin name has been confused with basilisk, as it was supposed to be an antidote to the basilisk's venom.[21]

Distribution and habitat

 

Basil is native to India and other tropical regions stretching from Africa to South East Asia, but has now become globalized due to human cultivation.[5]

Cultivation

 

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Growing conditions

 

Basil is sensitive to cold, with best growth in hot, dry conditions. It behaves as an annual if there is any chance of a frost. However, due to its popularity, basil is cultivated in many countries around the world. Production areas include countries in the Mediterranean area, those in the temperate zone, and others in subtropical climates.[23][page needed]

 

In Northern Europe, Canada, the northern states of the U.S., and the South Island of New Zealand, basil grows best if sown under glass in a peat pot, then planted out in late spring/early summer (when there is little chance of a frost); however, it can also thrive when planted outside in these climates. Additionally, it may be sown in soil once chance of frost is past. It fares best in well-drained soil with direct exposure to the sun.[citation needed]

 

Although basil grows best outdoors, it can be grown indoors in a pot and, like most herbs, will do best on a sun-facing windowsill, kept away from extremely cold drafts. A greenhouse or row cover is ideal if available. It can, however, even be grown in a basement under fluorescent lights. Supplemental lighting produces greater biomass and phenol production, with red + blue specifically increasing growth and flower bud production. UV-B increases the volatiles in O. basilicum essential oil, which has not been reproducible in other plants, and so may be unique to the genus or even to this species.[24]

 

Basil plants require regular watering, but not as much attention as is needed in other climates. If its leaves have wilted from lack of water, it will recover if watered thoroughly and placed in a sunny location. Yellow leaves towards the bottom of the plant are an indication that the plant has been stressed; usually this means that it needs less water, or less or more fertilizer.[25] Basil can be propagated reliably from cuttings with the stems of short cuttings suspended in water for two weeks or until roots develop.

Pruning, flowering, and seeding

Female carpenter bee foraging

 

Once a stem produces flowers, foliage production stops on that stem, the stem becomes woody, and essential oil production declines. To prevent this, a basil-grower may pinch off any flower stems before they are fully mature. Because only the blooming stem is so affected, some stems can be pinched for leaf production, while others are left to bloom for decoration or seeds. Picking the leaves off the plant helps promote growth, largely because the plant responds by converting pairs of leaflets next to the topmost leaves into new stems.

 

Once the plant is allowed to flower, it may produce seed pods containing small black seeds, which can be saved and planted the following year. If allowed to go to seed, a basil plant will grow back the next year.

Diseases

 

Basil suffers from several plant pathogens that can ruin the crop and reduce yield. Fusarium wilt is a soil-borne fungal disease that will quickly kill younger basil plants. Seedlings may be killed by Pythium damping off. A common foliar disease of basil is gray mold caused by Botrytis cinerea; it can cause infections post-harvest and is capable of killing the entire plant. Black spot can be seen on basil foliage and is caused by the fungi genus Colletotrichum. Downy mildew caused by Peronospora belbahrii is a significant disease, as first reported in Italy in 2003.[26] It was reported in the Florida in 2007 and by 2008 had spread along the eastern United States, reaching Canada.[27][28] Basil cultivars resistant to P. belbahrii have been developed.[29]

 

Non-pathogenic bacteria found on basil include Novosphingobium species.[30]

Uses

Basil, freshNutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)

Energy94 kJ (22 kcal)

Carbohydrates

 

2.65 g

Sugars0.30 g

Dietary fiber1.6 g

Fat

 

0.64 g

Protein

 

3.15 g

VitaminsQuantity

%DV†

Vitamin A equiv.

beta-Carotene

 

29%

264 μg

29%

3142 μg

Thiamine (B1)

3%

0.034 mg

Riboflavin (B2)

6%

0.076 mg

Niacin (B3)

6%

0.902 mg

Pantothenic acid (B5)

4%

0.209 mg

Vitamin B6

9%

0.155 mg

Folate (B9)

17%

68 μg

Choline

2%

11.4 mg

Vitamin C

20%

18.0 mg

Vitamin E

5%

0.80 mg

Vitamin K

346%

414.8 μg

MineralsQuantity

%DV†

Calcium

14%

177 mg

Copper

43%

0.385 mg

Iron

18%

3.17 mg

Magnesium

15%

64 mg

Manganese

50%

1.148 mg

Phosphorus

4%

56 mg

Potassium

10%

295 mg

Selenium

1%

0.3 μg

Sodium

0%

4 mg

Zinc

7%

0.81 mg

Other constituentsQuantity

Water92.06 g

Betaine0.4 mg

†Percentages estimated using US recommendations for adults,[31] except for potassium, which is estimated based on expert recommendation from the National Academies.[32]

Dried basil leaves

Culinary

 

Basil is most commonly used fresh in recipes. In general, it is added last, as cooking quickly destroys the flavor. The fresh herb can be kept for a short time in plastic bags in the refrigerator, or for a longer period in the freezer, after being blanched quickly in boiling water.

Leaves and flowers

 

The most commonly used Mediterranean basil cultivars are "Genovese", "Purple Ruffles", "Mammoth", "Cinnamon", "Lemon", "Globe", and "African Blue". Basil is one of the main ingredients in pesto, an Italian sauce with olive oil and basil as its primary ingredients. Many national cuisines use fresh or dried basils in soups and other foods, such as to thicken soups. Basil is commonly steeped in cream or milk to create flavor in ice cream or chocolate truffles.

 

Lemon basil has a strong lemony smell and flavor due to the presence of citral. It is widely used in Indonesia, where it is called kemangi and served raw as an accompaniment to meat or fish.

Seeds

Main article: Basil seeds

 

When soaked in water, the seeds of several basil varieties become gelatinous, and are used in Asian drinks and desserts such as the Indian faluda, the Iranian sharbat-e-rihan, or hột é.[citation needed] In Kashmir, the Ramadan fast is often broken with babre beole, a sharbat made with basil seeds.[33]

Folk medicine

 

Basil is used in folk medicine practices, such as those of Ayurveda or traditional Chinese medicine.[34]: 33–34 

Insecticide and insect repellent

 

Studies of the essential oil have shown insecticidal and insect-repelling properties,[35] including potential toxicity to mosquitos.[36] The essential oil is found by Huignard et al. 2008 to inhibit electrical activity by decreasing action potential amplitude, by shortening the post hyperpolarization phase, and reducing the action frequency of action potentials. In Huignard's opinion this is due to the linalool and estragole, the amplitude reduction due to linalool, and the phase shortening due to both.[37]

 

Callosobruchus maculatus, a pest which affects cowpea, is repelled by the essential oil.[37] The essential oil mixed with kaolin is both an adulticide and an ovicide, effective for three months against C. maculatus in cowpea.[37] The thrips Frankliniella occidentalis and Thrips tabaci are repelled by O. basilicum, making this useful as an insect repellent in other crops.[38] The pests Sitophilus oryzae, Stegobium paniceum, Tribolium castaneum, and Bruchus chinensis are evaluated by Deshpande et al. 1974 and '77.[37]

Nematicide

 

The essential oil is found by Malik et al. 1987 and Sangwan et al. 1990 to be nematicidal against Tylenchulus semipenetrans, Meloidogyne javanica, Anguina tritici, and Heterodera cajani.[39]

Bacterial and fungal inhibition

 

The essential oil of the leaf and terminal shoot is effective against a large number of bacterial species including Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Pseudomonas spp.[40] The essential oil of the leaf and terminal shoot is also effective against a large number of fungal species including Aspergillus spp., Candida spp., Mucor spp., and Geotrichum candidum.[35][40]

Misericord: St Augustine's Abbey, Bristol (now Bristol Cathedral).

 

A WILY WARNING: The poems attached to images in this set are based on the mediaeval French romances of Reynard the Fox. As mediaeval people had a much more bawdy approach to life than we do, some people may find the content of the poems rather offensive. They contain swearing, sex, sacrilege, violence, and sometimes a combination of all four. Sorry.

 

BRUIN BELEAGURED AND TYBERT ENTANGLED

 

“Alas, I have an earache!” Isengrin winks and groans,

He lays his head on Coupée’s tomb with grins and mournful moans,

He shakes his ear while all the beasts sing the Stabat Mater,

“My ear is healed! Living proof that Coupée is a martyr!”

 

“O! Where is Reynard” roars the King, “That fox of falsehood vile?

Bring him to me, Bruin the bear, for Reynard must stand trial!”

“Indeed good Lord,” says Bruin the bear, and ambles on his way,

Little knowing that he soon will rue this fateful day.

 

A bear has lost his scalp,

A priest has lost his balls

“O who hath done this mischief?”

King Noble wrathful calls.

The beasts all howl

They scoff and scowl

They curse the culprit’s name,

“O jiggered be his japes and jibes

For Reynard is to blame!”

 

To Maupertuis, Reynard’s castle, Bruin comes at length,

He knows he cannot breach the walls of such great height and strength,

“O Reynard, Reynard come outside, the King has called for you!”

“No indeed,” says the fox, “For I’m busy eating stew!

 

And after that I’ve pommes noisettes, and fricasee de bunny,

All washed down, my shaggy friend, with lots of mead and honey!”

At the word, poor Bruin drools, ears quivering at the tips,

“Did you say honey?” Bruin calls, and lustful licks his lips.

 

A bear has lost his scalp,

A priest has lost his balls

“O who hath done this mischief?”

King Noble wrathful calls.

The beasts all howl

They scoff and scowl

They curse the culprit’s name,

“O jiggered be his japes and jibes

For Reynard is to blame!”

 

“I did indeed,” sly Reynard says, “and sticky is my gob!

Come, see my honey, unguarded glutton, fat ungraceful slob!”

He leads him to a forester’s yard, where stands a half-split oak,

“The honey’s in that cleft, my friend!” He gives the bear a poke.

 

Slobbering then, Bruin the bear goes sniffing with his muzzle,

He sticks his head into the trunk the honey for to guzzle.

Stealthy Reynard creeps behind and pulls the wedges out,

“Help! I’m trapped! O! let me go!” poor Bruin doth bawl and shout.

 

A bear has lost his scalp,

A priest has lost his balls

“O who hath done this mischief?”

King Noble wrathful calls.

The beasts all howl

They scoff and scowl

They curse the culprit’s name,

“O jiggered be his japes and jibes

For Reynard is to blame!”

 

“Not on your nelly, selfish beast!” fleeing Reynard chuckles,

“Well, I’ll be buggered!” bawls the bear, pounding with his knuckles.

Just then the woodsman pokes his nose around his cottage door,

Runs to the village and brings back bold farmers by the score.

 

They beat the bear with stick and stone, he bellows now with fear,

He tears his head out from the tree, it rips off scalp and ear.

His shoulders drip with gouts of gore, but honey has he nought,

He flees and topples in a swoon at great King Noble’s court.

 

A bear has lost his scalp,

A priest has lost his balls

“O who hath done this mischief?”

King Noble wrathful calls.

The beasts all howl

They scoff and scowl

They curse the culprit’s name,

“O jiggered be his japes and jibes

For Reynard is to blame!”

 

“O! Where is Reynard” roars the King, “That fox of falsehood vile?

Bring him here, Tybert the cat, for Reynard must stand trial!”

“Indeed good Lord,” Tybert miaows, and scurries on his way,

Little knowing that he soon will rue this fateful day.

 

To Maupertuis, Reynard’s castle, Tybert comes at length,

He knows he cannot breach the walls of such great height and strength,

“Reynard, Reynard come outside!” “Nay! I’ve no time for cats!

Bugger off,” grins the fox, “for I’m busy eating rats!”

 

A bear has lost his scalp,

A priest has lost his balls

“O who hath done this mischief?”

King Noble wrathful calls.

The beasts all howl

They scoff and scowl

They curse the culprit’s name,

“O jiggered be his japes and jibes

For Reynard is to blame!”

 

“Did you say rats?” Tybert yowls, “I’d like one in my tummy!

For rats are tasty, yes indeed, and not as tough as bunny!”

“Ah!” says Reynard with a smile, “Then I will show you where

You may smell a rat, my friend, and mayhap one may snare!”

 

To a priest’s home Reynard leads him, creeping on all fours,

Within the priest sleeps bollock-naked, his harlot softly snores,

“Creep inside,” Reynard grins, “and gorge yourself on rats!”

But Tybert creeps into a snare, for the harlot hates all cats.

 

A bear has lost his scalp,

A priest has lost his balls

“O who hath done this mischief?”

King Noble wrathful calls.

The beasts all howl

They scoff and scowl

They curse the culprit’s name,

“O jiggered be his japes and jibes

For Reynard is to blame!”

 

Tybert hisses, spits and scratches, the priest leaps from his bed,

Grabs a cane and Tybert thrashes, merciless, upon his head,

Ne’er before had that feline received such bash and wallop -

He bares his teeth, sinks them deep, bites off the priest’s bare bollock.

 

The priest he roars with agony, the harlot looks dismayed,

Poor Tybert chews the bollock, but still he’s bashed and flayed.

At last the snare snaps in two, the harlot has he fought,

At last he flees and limps away unto Noble’s court.

 

A bear has lost his scalp,

A priest has lost his balls

“O who hath done this mischief?”

King Noble wrathful calls.

The beasts all howl

They scoff and scowl

They curse the culprit’s name,

“O jiggered be his japes and jibes

For Reynard is to blame!”

  

REYNARD'S CRUSADE

 

The King sends Grimbert, badger burly

To Reynard in the morning early.

Reynard’s cousin is Grimbert,

“Mayhap with thee he will play fair!”

 

Grimbert pounds on the portcullis,

Reynard sings inside “...qui tollis

Peccata mundi crême de la crême,

Dona eis requiem!

 

Chorus

Holy Reynard, blessed trickster

Your enemies are all too thick, Sir!

With your scrip, staff in your hand

Do you take the cross to the Holy Land?

Or will King Noble be betrayed

When Reynard goes on his crusade?

 

“The mighty king hath sent me hither

Tho’ from this task I wilt and wither,

O naughty fox! Wayward cousin!

Thy tricks are but a dime a dozen!”

 

Reynard stops and pricks his ear

At Grimbert’s words, he sheds a tear,

“O! Lacrimosa dies illa

Qua resurget ex gorilla!”

 

Chorus

 

“O Reynard, cousin, art thou shent?”

Reynard bawleth, “I repent!

O! Mea culpa! Dies irae!

Ne tortellini crême igne!”

 

“Do you really?” wept Grimbert,

“I pray the Lord thy life might spare!”

“O! Rex tremendae majestatis!

Je mange le coq qui salvos gratis!”

 

Chorus

To Noble’s court they go in haste,

Reynard says, “I’d like a taste

Of that fine cockrel over there!”

Grimbert groans and tears his hair:

 

“Incorrigible rogue! You repented -

Yet I doubt somehow that you meant it!”

Reynard says “Pickles et Red Leicester!

Inter oves locum praesta!”

 

Chorus

 

All the beasts come out to jeer,

Reynard sheds another tear.

“You beastly fox!” cries Couard the hare,

Reynard gives a menacing stare.

 

King Noble roars, “Methinks the gibbet

Will your noxious deeds inhibit!”

Quoth Reynard, “Absolvisti

Pater nostril mumbo jumbo Christi!”

 

Chorus

 

They tie the rope and hang the noose,

Reynard harangued by hen and goose,

Beaten, tied up and blindfolded,

The fox who left a wolf cuckolded.

 

The beasts are thus the fox upbraiding

When he says, “I’ll go crusading!

Infidelium omnipotem!

Reynard in Jerusalem!”

 

Chorus

 

Up the ladder fox doth grope,

A gaggle of geese pull on the rope,

But Noble then casts off his crown,

And cries, “For pity! Cut him down!”

 

A red-crossed tabard is bestowed

On Reynard. Chanticleer crowed,

“Don’t you see? ‘Tis but a jest!”

Reynard saith, “Stultissimus est!”

 

Chorus

 

“Methinks crusades are somewhat scary,

Grant me thy ring, Lady Fière!”

The Queen bestows her ruby ring,

Reynard doth a soft psalm sing.

 

“Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion,

Me fancy coitus with that lion!

Reddetur in Jerusalem!

Mon dieu! Ici une tasty femme!”

 

Chorus

 

As he goes forth upon his trek

He grabs poor Couard by the neck,

“Methinks my cubs would like to meet you,

And mayhap also to eat you!”

 

Then he rips the red-crossed flag,

He wipes his arsehole with the rag,

He shouts to Noble, “Daft old twit!

It looks better smeared with shit!”

 

Chorus

 

King Noble rends his mane and roars,

Fière haughtily ignores

Her husband fierce. She calls him “Fool!

You’ve brought us all to ridicule!”

 

At Maupertuis Reynard’s pot

Soon is ready, piping hot.

“Lepus capensis! Vere yummy!

Requiem in Reynard’s tummy!”

 

Chorus

  

THE SIEGE OF MAUPERTUIS

 

Moat, portcullis, crenellations:

King Noble is in need of patience.

Reynard’s strong fortifications

Will stand the siege; there is no doubt

The King will have to starve him out!

 

Reynard sits inside and grins,

“I have beer and wine and gin -

So bugger you, bold Isengrin!

I have capons plump and tasty

And lots of flour to make the pastry!”

 

Upon the tower Reynard stands,

He winks his eye and waves his hands,

His gaze on Lady Hersent lands:

“I trod your grapes, and that’s a fact;

I had something Isengrin lacked!”

 

Reynard, what will break this siege?

Why, my libido will, my liege!

 

He sees Tybert by the moat,

Vile Reynard doth leer and gloat,

“Oh, Tybert, patchy is thy coat!

Such maltreatment oft befalls

A cat who steals a parson’s balls!”

 

Reynard goes down into his hall,

He eats two capons, giblets, all,

“I’ll never be King Noble’s thrall,

Though I’d risk any kind of strife

If I could tup King Noble’s wife!”

 

‘Neath Maupertuis Noble camps,

In the cold, brave Bruin stamps,

At night there glow a myriad lamps.

Fière sleeps separate in a sulk

Below the castle’s looming hulk.

 

Reynard, what will break this siege?

Why, my libido will, my liege!

 

And so it is, for many a day,

King Noble will not go away,

Although the fog hangs grim and grey,

And Reynard watches the haughty Queen,

“The sexiest I’ve ever seen!”

 

And so when all do sleep and snore,

Lustful Reynard waits no more,

“I’ll turn this queen into a whore!”

He creeps upon his enemy

And ties each tail to a tree.

 

He slips between Fière’s thighs,

In the dark she moans and sighs,

She pants and squeals, howls and cries,

“Oh! My Lord! Strong and tawny!

What hath made thee hard and horny?”

 

Reynard, what will break this siege?

Why, my libido will, my liege!

 

At length she wakes and sees Reynard,

Still the fox is at it hard,

“Oh! Rape and ravish! Such disregard

For my status! O violation!

And right in the middle of ovulation!”

 

They wake to see the fox defiling

Noble’s Queen, and reviling

All the host, and slyly smiling,

Noble roars, the fox ne’er flinches,

The lion’s tail stretched by six inches.

 

The beasts all cry with lamentation,

Noble sweats with desperation,

Reynard completes his desecration

Of the poor disgruntled Queen,

Most brazen outlaw ever seen.

 

Reynard, what will break this siege?

Why, my libido will, my liege!

 

All the beasts do weep and wail,

Noble looks embarrassed, pale,

But Sir Tardy, valiant snail

Wafts his little silver sword

And cuts free vassal, King and lord.

 

Many creatures lose their tails

To the lightning sword of snail

But now they’re hard on Reynard’s trail

And Tardy grabs him by the foot,

“Methinks, sly fox, thou art kaput!”

 

And so is Reynard brought to grief

Caught by his own lust and lief

Yet still he scowls and bares his teeth,

The wily fox they tie and gag,

“But it was worth it for a shag!”

 

Reynard, what will break this siege?

Why, my libido will, my liege!

  

FOR AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY FOR THESE SONGS, PLEASE GO TO THE REYNARD THE FOX SET ON MY PHOTOSTREAM.

 

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Lions

.

Ruaha National Park, Tanzania, Africa, November 2021

.

Lions are polygamous and will breed throughout the year, but females are usually restricted to the one or two adult males of their pride. Females are receptive to mating for up to four days within a widely variable reproductive cycle. A pair generally mates every 20–30 minutes, with up to 50 copulations in a 24 hour period. Such extended copulation not only stimulates ovulation in the female but also secures paternity for the male by excluding other males.

Yes they're a little green. I was making St Patricks Day pancakes and added green food dye for a little extra festivity.

Recording Month One

Vital stats

Mother's age: 32

Height: 5'3"

Weight: 129 lbs

Body Fat: 28%

Symptoms:

Positive HCG test

Dizzy

Sleepy

Raised body tempurature

Slight aversion to some foods

Feels like a pinky finger is gently poking the inside of my lower left abdomen

Just "felt pregnant"

Taking:

Throxine for underactive thyroid

Pre-natal vitamin

Omega-3 Fish Oil

Extra calcium, selenium, zinc, B-vitamin complex, choline

Precautionary prometrium 200 mg

Baby's age 4 weeks (basically 2 weeks since ovulation)

Est. due date: June 12, 2008

Cycle Day 21: Progesterone Level was 10

October 12: Progesterone Level was 26.60

October 16: Progesterone Level was 86.56

 

These values are normal.

 

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), sometimes called the koala bear, is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae and its closest living relatives are the wombats. The koala is found in coastal areas of the mainland's eastern and southern regions, inhabiting Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. It is easily recognisable by its stout, tailless body and large head with round, fluffy ears and large, dark nose. The koala has a body length of 60–85 cm (24–33 in) and weighs 4–15 kg (9–33 lb). Fur colour ranges from silver grey to chocolate brown. Koalas from the northern populations are typically smaller and lighter in colour than their counterparts further south. These populations possibly are separate subspecies, but this is disputed.

 

Koalas typically inhabit open Eucalyptus woodland, as the leaves of these trees make up most of their diet. This eucalypt diet has low nutritional and caloric content and contains toxic compounds that deter most other mammals from feeding on it. Koalas are largely sedentary and sleep up to twenty hours a day. They are asocial animals, and bonding exists only between mothers and dependent offspring. Adult males communicate with loud bellows that intimidate rivals and attract mates. Males mark their presence with secretions from scent glands located on their chests. Being marsupials, koalas give birth to underdeveloped young that crawl into their mothers' pouches, where they stay for the first six to seven months of their lives. These young koalas, known as joeys, are fully weaned around a year old. Koalas have few natural predators and parasites, but are threatened by various pathogens, such as Chlamydiaceae bacteria and koala retrovirus.

 

Because of their distinctive appearance, koalas, along with kangaroos and emus, are recognised worldwide as symbols of Australia. They were hunted by Indigenous Australians and depicted in myths and cave art for millennia. The first recorded encounter between a European and a koala was in 1798, and an image of the animal was published in 1810 by naturalist George Perry. Botanist Robert Brown wrote the first detailed scientific description of the koala in 1814, although his work remained unpublished for 180 years. Popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala, introducing the species to the general British public. Further details about the animal's biology were revealed in the 19th century by several English scientists. Koalas are listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Among the many threats to their existence are habitat destruction caused by agriculture, urbanisation, droughts, and associated bushfires, some related to climate change. In February 2022, the koala was officially listed as endangered in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Queensland.

 

Etymology

The word "koala" comes from the Dharug gula, meaning 'no water'. Although the vowel "u" was originally written in the English orthography as "oo" (in spellings such as coola or koolah — two syllables), the spelling later became "oa" and the word is now pronounced in three syllables, possibly in error.

 

Adopted by white settlers, "koala" became one of several hundred Aboriginal loan words in Australian English, where it was also commonly referred to as "native bear", later "koala bear", for its supposed resemblance to a bear. It is also one of several Aboriginal words that made it into International English alongside words like "didgeridoo" and "kangaroo". The generic name, Phascolarctos, is derived from the Greek words φάσκωλος (phaskolos) 'pouch' and ἄρκτος (arktos) 'bear'. The specific name, cinereus, is Latin for 'ash coloured'.

 

Taxonomy

The koala was given its generic name Phascolarctos in 1816 by French zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, who would not give it a specific name until further review. In 1819, German zoologist Georg August Goldfuss gave it the binomial Lipurus cinereus. Because Phascolarctos was published first, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, it has priority as the official name of the genus. French naturalist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest coined the name Phascolarctos fuscus in 1820, suggesting that the brown-coloured versions were a different species than the grey ones. Other names suggested by European authors included Marodactylus cinereus by Goldfuss in 1820, P. flindersii by René Primevère Lesson in 1827, and P. koala by John Edward Gray in 1827.

 

Evolution

The koala is classified with wombats (family Vombatidae) and several extinct families (including marsupial tapirs, marsupial lions and giant wombats) in the suborder Vombatiformes within the order Diprotodontia. The Vombatiformes are a sister group to a clade that includes macropods (kangaroos and wallabies) and possums. The koala's lineage possibly branched off around 40 million years ago during the Eocene.

 

The modern koala is the only extant member of Phascolarctidae, a family that includes several extinct genera and species. During the Oligocene and Miocene, koalas lived in rainforests and had more generalised diets. Some species, such as the Riversleigh rainforest koala (Nimiokoala greystanesi) and some species of Perikoala, were around the same size as the modern koala, while others, such as species of Litokoala, were one-half to two-thirds its size Like the modern species, prehistoric koalas had well developed ear structures which suggests that they also made long-distance vocalisations and had a relatively inactive lifestyle. During the Miocene, the Australian continent began drying out, leading to the decline of rainforests and the spread of open Eucalyptus woodlands. The genus Phascolarctos split from Litokoala in the late Miocene, and had several adaptations that allowed it to live on a specialised eucalyptus diet: a shifting of the palate towards the front of the skull; upper teeth lined by thicker bone, molars located relatively low compared the jaw joint and with more chewing surface; smaller pterygoid fossa; and a larger gap separating the incisor teeth and the molars.

 

P. cinereus may have emerged as a dwarf form of the giant koala (P. stirtoni), following the disappearance of several giant animals in the late Pleistocene. A 2008 study questions this hypothesis, noting that P. cinereus and P. stirtoni were sympatric during the middle to late Pleistocene, and the major difference in the morphology of their teeth. The fossil record of the modern koala extends back at least to the middle Pleistocene.

 

Molecular relationship between living Diprotodontia families based on Phillips and collages (2023)

Vombatidae (wombats)

Phascolarctidae (koalas)

Acrobatidae

Tarsipedidae (honey possum)

Petauridae (wrist-winged gliders and allies)

Pseudocheiridae (ringtail possums and allies)

Macropodidae (kangaroos, wallabies and allies)

Phalangeridae (brushtail possums and cuscuses)

Burramyidae (pygmy possums)

 

Morphology tree of Phascolarctidae based on Beck and collages (2020)

Thylacoleonidae (extinct marsupial lion and allies)

Vombatomorphia (wombats and fossil relatives)

Phascolarctidae

Priscakoala lucyturnbullae

Madakoala spp.

Perikoala robustus

Nimiokoala greystanesi

Litokoala dicksmithi

Litokoala kutjamarpensis

Phascolarctos cinereus

  

Genetics and variations

Three subspecies are recognised: the Queensland koala (Phascolarctos cinereus adustus, Thomas 1923), the New South Wales koala (Phascolarctos cinereus cinereus, Goldfuss 1817), and the Victorian koala (Phascolarctos cinereus victor, Troughton 1935). These forms are distinguished by pelage colour and thickness, body size, and skull shape. The Queensland koala is the smallest of the three, with silver or grey short hairs and a shorter skull. The Victorian koala is the largest, with shaggier, brown fur and a wider skull. The geographic limits of these variations are based on state borders, and their status as subspecies is disputed. A 1999 genetic study suggests koalas exist as a cline within a single evolutionarily significant unit with limited gene flow between local populations.

 

Other studies have found that koala populations have high levels of inbreeding and low genetic variation. Such low genetic diversity may have been caused by declines in the population during the late Pleistocene. Rivers and roads have been shown to limit gene flow and contribute to the isolation of southeast Queensland populations. In April 2013, scientists from the Australian Museum and Queensland University of Technology announced they had fully sequenced the koala genome.

 

Characteristics

The koala is a robust animal with a large head and vestigial or non-existent tail. It has a body length of 60–85 cm (24–33 in) and a weight of 4–15 kg (9–33 lb), making it among the largest arboreal marsupials. Koalas from Victoria are twice as heavy as those from Queensland.  The species is sexually dimorphic, with males 50% larger than females. Males are further distinguished from females by their more curved noses and the presence of chest glands, which are visible as bald patches.  The female's pouch opening is secured by a sphincter which holds the young in.

 

The pelage of the koala is denser on the back. The back fur colour varies from light grey to chocolate brown.  The belly fur is whitish; on the rump it is mottled whitish and dark. The koala has the most effective insulating back fur of any marsupial and is highly resilient to wind and rain, while the belly fur can reflect solar radiation. The koala's curved, sharp claws are well adapted for climbing trees. The large forepaws have two opposable digits (the first and second, which are opposable to the other three) that allow them to grip small branches. On the hind paws, the second and third digits are fused, a typical condition for members of the Diprotodontia, and the attached claws (which are still separate) function like a comb.  The animal has a robust skeleton and a short, muscular upper body with relatively long upper limbs that contribute to its ability to scale trees. In addition, the thigh muscles are anchored further down the shinbone, increasing its climbing power. 

 

For a mammal, the koala has a proportionally small brain,  being 60% smaller than that of a typical diprotodont, weighing only 19.2 g (0.68 oz) on average. The brain's surface is fairly smooth and "primitive".  It does not entirely fill up the cranial cavity, unlike in most mammals,  and is lightened by large amounts of cerebrospinal fluid. It is possible that the fluid protects the brain when animal falls from a tree.  The koala's small brain size may be an adaptation to the energy restrictions imposed by its diet, which is insufficient to sustain a larger brain. Because of its small brain, the koala has a limited ability to perform complex, unusual behaviours. For example, it will not eat plucked leaves on a flat surface, which conflicts with its normal feeding routine.

 

The koala has a broad, dark nose with a good sense of smell, and it is known to sniff the oils of individual branchlets to assess their edibility.  Its relatively small eyes are unusual among marsupials in that the pupils have vertical slits, an adaptation to living on a more vertical plane. Its round ears provide it with good hearing,  and it has a well-developed middle ear. The koala larynx is located relatively low in the vocal tract and can be pulled down even further. They also possess unique folds in the velum (soft palate), known as velar vocal folds, in addition to the typical vocal folds of the larynx. These features allow the koala to produce deeper sounds than would otherwise be possible for their size.

 

The koala has several adaptations for its poor, toxic and fibrous diet.  The animal's dentition consists of the incisors and cheek teeth (a single premolar and four molars on each jaw), which are separated by a large gap (a characteristic feature of herbivorous mammals). The koala bites a leaf with the incisors and clips it with the premolars at the petiole, before chewing it to pieces with the cusped molars.  Koalas may also store food in their cheek pouches before it is ready to be chewed. The partially worn molars of koalas in their prime are optimal for breaking the leaves into small particles, resulting in more efficient stomach digestion and nutrient absorption in the small intestine,  which digests the eucalyptus leaves to provide most of the animal's energy.  A koala sometimes regurgitates the food into the mouth to be chewed a second time.

 

Koalas are hindgut fermenters, and their digestive retention can last for up to 100 hours in the wild or up to 200 hours in captivity. This is made possible by their caecum—200 cm (80 in) long and 10 cm (4 in) in diameter—possibly the largest for an animal when accounting for its size.  Koalas can hold food particles for longer fermentation if needed. They are more likely keep smaller particles as larger ones take longer to digest.  While the hindgut is relatively large, only 10% of the animal's energy is obtained from digestion in this chamber. The koala's metabolic rate is only 50% of the typical mammalian rate, owing to its low energy intake,  although this can vary between seasons and sexes.  They can digest the toxic plant secondary metabolites, phenolic compounds and terpenes present in eucalyptus leaves due to their production of cytochrome P450, which breaks down these poisons in the liver. The koala replaces lost water at a lower rate than some other species like some possums.  It maintains water by absorbing it in the caecum, resulting in drier faecal pellets packed with undigested fibre. 

 

Distribution and habitat

The koala's geographic range covers roughly 1,000,000 km2 (390,000 sq mi), and 30 ecoregions. It ranges throughout mainland eastern and southeastern Australia, including the states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. The koala was also introduced to several nearby islands. The population on Magnetic Island represents the northern limit of its range.

 

Fossil evidence shows that the koala's range stretched as far west as southwestern Western Australia during the late Pleistocene. They were likely driven to extinction in these areas by environmental changes and hunting by Indigenous Australians.  Koalas were introduced to Western Australia at Yanchep in 2022. Koalas can be found in both tropical and temperate habitats ranging from dense woodlands to more spaced-out forests. In semi-arid climates, they prefer riparian habitats, where nearby streams and creeks provide refuge during times of drought and extreme heat.

 

Behaviour and ecology

Koalas are herbivorous, and while most of their diet consists of eucalypt leaves, they can be found in trees of other genera, such as Acacia, Allocasuarina, Callitris, Leptospermum, and Melaleuca. Though the foliage of over 600 species of Eucalyptus is available, the koala shows a strong preference for around 30. They prefer plant matter with higher protein over fibre and lignin.  The most favoured species are Eucalyptus microcorys, E. tereticornis, and E. camaldulensis, which, on average, make up more than 20% of their diet. Despite its reputation as a picky eater, the koala is more generalist than some other marsupial species, such as the greater glider. The koala does not need to drink often as it can get enough water in the eucalypt leaves,  though larger males may additionally drink water found on the ground or in tree hollows.  When feeding, a koala reaches out to grab leaves with one forepaw while the other paws hang on to the branch. Depending on the size of the individual, a koala can walk to the end of a branch or must stay near the base.  Each day, koalas eat up to 400 grams (14 oz) of leaves, spread over four to six feeding periods.  Despite their adaptations to a low-energy lifestyle, they have meagre fat reserves and need to feed often. 

 

Due to their low-energy diet, koalas limit their activity and sleep 20 hours a day. They are predominantly active at night and spend most of their waking hours foraging. They typically eat and sleep in the same tree, possibly for as long as a day.  On warm days, a koala may rest with its back against a branch or lie down with its limbs dangling.  When it gets very hot, the koala rests lower in the canopy and near the trunk, where the surface is cooler than the surrounding air. It curls up when it gets cold and wet.  A koala will find a lower, thicker branch on which to rest when it gets windy. While it spends most of the time in the tree, the animal descends to the ground to move to another tree, leaping along. The koala usually grooms itself with its hind paws, with their double claws, but sometimes uses its forepaws or mouth. 

 

Social life

Koalas are asocial animals and spend just 15 minutes a day on social behaviours. Where there are more koalas and fewer trees, home ranges are smaller and more clumped while the reverse is true for areas with fewer animals and more trees.  Koala society appears to consist of "residents" and "transients", the former being mostly adult females and the latter males. Resident males appear to be territorial and dominant. The territories of dominant males are found near breeding females, while younger males must wait until they reach full size to challenge for breeding rights.  Adult males occasionally venture outside their home ranges; when they do so, dominant ones retain their status.  As a male climbs a new tree, he rubs his chest against it and sometimes dribbles urine. This scent-marking behaviour probably serves as communication, and individuals are known to sniff the bottom of a newly found tree. Chest gland secretions are complex chemical mixtures — about 40 compounds were identified in one analysis — that vary in composition and concentration with the season and the age of the individual.

 

Adult males communicate with loud bellows — "a long series of deep, snoring inhalations and belching exhalations". Because of their low frequency, these bellows can travel far through the forest.  Koalas may bellow at any time of the year, particularly during the breeding season, when it serves to attract females and possibly intimidate other males. They also bellow to advertise their presence to their neighbours when they climb a different tree.  These sounds signal the male's actual body size, as well as exaggerate it; females pay more attention to bellows that originate from larger males. Female koalas bellow, though more softly, in addition to making snarls, wails, and screams. These calls are produced when in distress and when making defensive threats. Squeaking and sqawking are produced when distraught; the former is made by younger animals and the latter by older ones. When another individual climbs over it, a koala makes a low closed-mouth grunt. Koalas also communicate with facial expressions. When snarling, wailing, or squawking, the animal curls the upper lip and points its ears forward. Screaming koalas pull their lips and ears back. Females form an oval shape with their lips when annoyed.

 

Agonistic behaviour typically consists of quarrels between individuals that are trying to pass each other in the tree. This occasionally involves biting. Strangers may wrestle, chase, and bite each other. In extreme situations, a male may try to displace a smaller rival from a tree, chasing, cornering and biting it. Once the individual is driven away, the victor bellows and marks the tree.  Pregnant and lactating females are particularly aggressive and attack individuals that come too close. In general, however, koalas tend to avoid fighting due to energy costs. 

 

Reproduction and development

A young joey, preserved at Port Macquarie Koala Hospital

Koalas are seasonal breeders, and give birth from October to May. Females in oestrus lean their heads back and shake their bodies. Despite these obvious signals, males will try to copulate with any female during this period, mounting them from behind. Because of his much larger size, a male can overpower a female. A female may scream and vigorously fight off her suitors but will accede to one that is dominant or familiar. The commotion can attract other males to the scene, obliging the incumbent to delay mating and fight off the intruders. A female may learn who is more dominant during these fights. Older males usually have accumulated scratches, scars, and cuts on the exposed parts of their noses and their eyelids.

 

Koalas are induced ovulators. The gestation period lasts 33–35 days, and a female gives birth to one joey (although twins do occur). As marsupials, the young are born tiny and barely formed, weighing no more than 0.5 g (0.02 oz). However, their lips, forelimbs, and shoulders are relatively advanced, and they can breathe, defecate and urinate. The joey crawls into its mother's pouch to continue the rest of its development. Female koalas do not clean their pouches, an unusual trait among marsupials.

 

The joey latches on to one of the female's two teats and suckles it.  The female lactates for as long as a year to make up for her low energy production. Unlike in other marsupials, koala milk becomes less fatty as the joey grows in the pouch.  After seven weeks, the joey has a proportionally large head, clear edges around its face, more colouration, and a visible pouch (if female) or scrotum (male). At 13 weeks, the joey weighs around 50 g (1.8 oz) and its head is twice as big as before. The eyes begin to open and hair begins to appear. At 26 weeks, the fully furred animal resembles an adult and can look outside the pouch. 

  

Mother with joey on back

At six or seven months of age, the joey weighs 300–500 g (11–18 oz) and fully emerges from the pouch for the first time. It explores its new surroundings cautiously, clutching its mother for support.  Around this time, the mother prepares it for a eucalyptus diet by producing a faecal pap that the joey eats from her cloaca. This pap comes from the cecum, is more liquid than regular faeces, and is filled with bacteria. A nine month old joey has its adult coat colour and weighs 1 kg (2.2 lb). Having permanently left the pouch, it rides on its mother's back for transportation, learning to climb by grasping branches.  Gradually, it becomes more independent from its mother, who becomes pregnant again after a year, and the young is now around 2.5 kg (5.5 lb). Her bond with her previous offspring is permanently severed and she no longer allows it to suckle, but it will stay nearby until it is one-and-a-half to two years old. 

 

Females become sexually mature at about three years of age and can then become pregnant; in comparison, males reach sexual maturity when they are about four years old, although they can experience spermatogenesis as early as two years.  Males do not start marking their scent until they reach sexual maturity, though their chest glands become functional much earlier. Koalas can breed every year if environmental conditions are good, though the long dependence of the young usually leads to year-long gaps in births. 

 

Health and mortality

Koalas may live from 13 to 18 years in the wild. While female koalas usually live this long, males may die sooner because of their more risky lives.  Koalas usually survive falls from trees and can climb back up, but they can get hurt and even die, particularly inexperienced young and fighting males.  Around six years of age, the koala's chewing teeth begin to wear down and their chewing efficiency decreases. Eventually, the cusps disappear completely and the animal will die of starvation. Koalas have few predators. Dingos and large pythons and some birds of prey may take them. Koalas are generally not subject to external parasites, other than ticks around the coast. The mite Sarcoptes scabiei gives koalas mange, while the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans skin ulcers, but even these are uncommon. Internal parasites are few and have little effect.  These include the tapeworm Bertiella obesa, commonly found in the intestine, and the nematodes Marsupostrongylus longilarvatus and Durikainema phascolarcti, which are infrequently found in the lungs.[59] In a three-year study of almost 600 koalas taken to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland, 73.8% of the animals were infected with parasitic protozoal genus Trypanosoma, the most frequent of which was T. irwini.

 

Koalas can be subject to pathogens such as Chlamydiaceae bacteria,  which can cause keratoconjunctivitis, urinary tract infection, and reproductive tract infection.  Such infections are common on the mainland, but absent in some island populations.  The koala retrovirus (KoRV) may cause koala immune deficiency syndrome (KIDS) which is similar to AIDS in humans. Prevalence of KoRV in koala populations suggests a trend spreading from north to south, where populations go from being completely infected to being partially uninfected.

 

The animals are vulnerable to bushfires due to their slow speed and the flammability of eucalypt trees. The koala instinctively seeks refuge in the higher branches, where it is vulnerable to intense heat and flames. Bushfires also break up the animal's habitat, which isolates them, decreases their numbers and creates genetic bottlenecks. Dehydration and overheating can also prove fatal.  Consequently, the koala is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Models of climate change in Australia predict warmer and drier climates, suggesting that the koala's range will shrink in the east and south to more mesic habitats.

 

Human relations

The first written reference to the koala was recorded by John Price, servant of John Hunter, the Governor of New South Wales. Price encountered the "cullawine" on 26 January 1798, during an expedition to the Blue Mountains, but his remarks would first be published in Historical Records of Australia, nearly a century later. In 1802, French-born explorer Francis Louis Barrallier encountered the animal when his two Aboriginal guides, returning from a hunt, brought back two koala feet they were intending to eat. Barrallier preserved the appendages and sent them and his notes to Hunter's successor, Philip Gidley King, who forwarded them to Joseph Banks. Similar to Price, Barrallier's notes were not published until 1897.  Reports of the "Koolah" appeared in the Sydney Gazette in late 1803, and helped provide the impetus for King to send the artist John Lewin to paint watercolours of the animal. Lewin painted three pictures, one of which was used as a print in Georges Cuvier's Le Règne Animal (The Animal Kingdom) (1827).

 

Botanist Robert Brown was the first to write a formal scientific description of the koala in 1803, based on a female specimen captured near what is now Mount Kembla in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Austrian botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer drew the animal's skull, throat, feet, and paws. Brown's work remained unpublished and largely unnoticed, however, as his field books and notes remained in his possession until his death, when they were bequeathed to the British Museum (Natural History) in London. They were not identified until 1994, while Bauer's koala watercolours were not published until 1989.  William Paterson, who had befriended Brown and Bauer during their stay in New South Wales, wrote an eyewitness report of his encounters with the animals and this would be the basis for British surgeon Everard Home's anatomical writings on them.  Home, who in 1808 published his report in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, coined the scientific name Didelphis coola. 

 

George Perry would officially publish the first image of the koala in his 1810 natural history work Arcana.  Perry called it the "New Holland Sloth", and his dislike for the koala, evident in his description of the animal, was reflected in the contemporary British attitudes towards Australian animals as strange and primitive the eye is placed like that of the Sloth, very close to the mouth and nose, which gives it a clumsy awkward appearance, and void of elegance in the combination they have little either in their character or appearance to interest the Naturalist or Philosopher. As Nature however provides nothing in vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature.

  

Natural history illustrator John Gould popularised the koala with his 1863 work The Mammals of Australia.

Naturalist and popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala in his three-volume work The Mammals of Australia (1845–1863) and introduced the species, as well as other members of Australia's little-known faunal community, to the public. Comparative anatomist Richard Owen, in a series of publications on the physiology and anatomy of Australian mammals, presented a paper on the anatomy of the koala to the Zoological Society of London. In this widely cited publication, he provided an early description of its internal anatomy, and noted its general structural similarity to the wombat.  English naturalist George Robert Waterhouse, curator of the Zoological Society of London, was the first to correctly classify the koala as a marsupial in the 1840s, and compared it to fossil species Diprotodon and Nototherium, which had been discovered just recently.  Similarly, Gerard Krefft, curator of the Australian Museum in Sydney, noted evolutionary mechanisms at work when comparing the koala to fossil marsupials in his 1871 The Mammals of Australia.

 

Britain finally received a living koala in 1881, which was obtained by the Zoological Society of London. As related by prosecutor to the society, William Alexander Forbes, the animal suffered an accidental demise when the heavy lid of a washstand fell on it and it was unable to free itself. Forbes dissected the fresh specimen and wrote about the female reproductive system, the brain, and the liver — parts not previously described by Owen, who had access only to preserved specimens.  Scottish embryologist William Caldwell — well known in scientific circles for determining the reproductive mechanism of the platypus — described the uterine development of the koala in 1884, and used this new information to convincingly map out the evolutionary timeline of the koala and the monotremes. 

 

Main article: Koala emblems and popular culture

The koala is well known worldwide and is a major draw for Australian zoos and wildlife parks. It has been featured in popular culture and as soft toys.  It benefited the Australian tourism industry by over $1 billion in 1998, and this has subsequently grown. Its international popularly rose after World War II, when tourism to Australia increased and the animals were exported to zoos overseas.  In 1997, about 75% of European and Japanese tourists placed the koala at the top of their list of animals to see. According to biologist Stephen Jackson: "If you were to take a straw poll of the animal most closely associated with Australia, it's a fair bet that the koala would come out marginally in front of the kangaroo".  Factors that contribute to the koala's enduring popularity include its teddy bear-like appearance with childlike body proportions.

 

The koala is featured in the Dreamtime stories and mythology of Indigenous Australians. The Tharawal people believed that the animal helped them get to the continent by rowing the boat. Another myth tells of how a tribe killed a koala and used its long intestines to create a bridge for people from other parts of the world.  How the koala lost its tail has been the subject of many tales. In one, a kangaroo cuts it off to punish the koala for its uncouth behaviour.  Tribes in both Queensland and Victoria regarded the koala as a wise animal which gave valuable guidance. Bidjara-speaking people credited the koala for making trees grow in their arid lands.  The animal is also depicted in rock carvings, though less so than some other species.

 

Early European settlers in Australia considered the koala to be a creeping sloth-like animal with a "fierce and menacing look".  At the turn of the 20th century, the koala's reputation took a more positive turn. It appears in Ethel Pedley's 1899 book Dot and the Kangaroo, as the "funny native bear".  Artist Norman Lindsay depicted a more anthropomorphic koala in The Bulletin cartoons, starting in 1904. This character also appeared as Bunyip Bluegum in Lindsay's 1918 book The Magic Pudding. The most well known fictional koala is Blinky Bill. Created by Dorothy Wall in 1933, the character appeared in several books and has been the subject of films, TV series, merchandise, and a 1986 environmental song by John Williamson.  The koala first appeared on an Australian stamp in 1930.

The song "Ode to a Koala Bear" appears on the B-side of the 1983 Paul McCartney/Michael Jackson duet single Say Say Say.  A koala is the main character in Hanna-Barbera's The Kwicky Koala Show and Nippon Animation's Noozles, both of which were animated cartoons of the early 1980s. Food products shaped like the koala include the Caramello Koala chocolate bar and the bite-sized cookie snack Koala's March. Dadswells Bridge in Victoria features a tourist complex shaped like a giant koala  and the Queensland Reds rugby team has a koala as its icon.

 

Koala diplomacy

Several political leaders and members of royal families had their pictures taken with koalas, including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry, Crown Prince Naruhito, Crown Princess Masako, Pope John Paul II, US President Bill Clinton, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and South African President Nelson Mandela At the 2014 G20 Brisbane summit, hosted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, many world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama, were photographed holding koalas. The event gave rise to the term "koala diplomacy", which then became the Oxford Word of the Month for December 2016. The term also includes the loan of koalas by the Australian government to overseas zoos in countries such as Singapore and Japan, as a form of "soft power diplomacy", like the "panda diplomacy" practised by China.

 

Main article: Koala conservation

The koala was originally classified as Least Concern on the Red List, and reassessed as Vulnerable in 2014. In the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Queensland, the species was listed under the EPBC Act in February 2022 as endangered by extinction. The described population was determined in 2012 to be "a species for the purposes of the EPBC Act 1999" in Federal legislation.

 

Australian policymakers had declined a 2009 proposal to include the koala in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. A 2017 WWF report found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland, and a 26% decline in New South Wales. The koala population in South Australia and Victoria appear to be abundant; however, the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) argued that the exclusion of Victorian populations from protective measures was based on a misconception that the total koala population was 200,000, whereas they believed in 2012 that it was probably less than 100,000. AKF estimated in 2022 that there could be only 43,000–100,000.[80] This is compared with 8 to 10 million at the start of the 20th century. The Australian Government's Threatened Species Scientific Committee estimated that the 2021 koala population was 92,000, down from 185,000 two decades prior.

 

The koala was heavily hunted by European settlers in the early 20th century,  largely for its fur. Australia exported as many as two million pelts by 1924. Koala furs were used to make rugs, coat linings, muffs, and on women's garment trimmings. The first successful efforts at conserving the species were initiated by the establishment of Brisbane's Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and Sydney's Koala Park Sanctuary in the 1920s and 1930s. The owner of the latter park, Noel Burnet, created the first successful breeding program and earned a reputation as a top expert on the species.

 

One of the biggest anthropogenic threats to the koala is habitat destruction and fragmentation. Near the coast, the main cause of this is urbanisation, while in rural areas, habitat is cleared for agriculture. Its favoured trees are also taken down to be made into wood products.  In 2000, Australia had the fifth highest rate of land clearance globally, having removed 564,800 hectares (1,396,000 acres) of native plants.  The distribution of the koala has shrunk by more than 50% since European arrival, largely due to fragmentation of habitat in Queensland. Nevertheless, koalas live in many protected areas.

 

While urbanisation can pose a threat to koala populations, the animals can survive in urban areas provided enough trees are present. Urban populations have distinct vulnerabilities: collisions with vehicles and attacks by domestic dogs. Cars and dogs kill about 4,000 animals every year. To reduce road deaths, government agencies have been exploring various wildlife crossing options, such as the use of fencing to channel animals toward an underpass, in some cases adding a ledge as a walkway to an existing culvert. Injured koalas are often taken to wildlife hospitals and rehabilitation centres. In a 30-year retrospective study performed at a New South Wales koala rehabilitation centre, trauma was found to be the most frequent cause of admission, followed by symptoms of Chlamydia infection

The alpaca (Lama pacos) is a species of South American camelid mammal. It is similar to, and often confused with, the llama. However, alpacas are often noticeably smaller than llamas. The two animals are closely related and can successfully crossbreed. Both species are believed to have been domesticated from their wild relatives, the vicuña and guanaco. There are two breeds of alpaca: the Suri alpaca and the Huacaya alpaca.

 

Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of Southern Peru, Western Bolivia, Ecuador, and Northern Chile at an altitude of 3,500 to 5,000 metres (11,000 to 16,000 feet) above sea level. Alpacas are considerably smaller than llamas, and unlike llamas, they were not bred to be working animals, but were bred specifically for their fiber. Alpaca fiber is used for making knitted and woven items, similar to sheep's wool. These items include blankets, sweaters, hats, gloves, scarves, a wide variety of textiles, and ponchos, in South America, as well as sweaters, socks, coats, and bedding in other parts of the world. The fiber comes in more than 52 natural colors as classified in Peru, 12 as classified in Australia, and 16 as classified in the United States.

 

Alpacas communicate through body language. The most common is spitting to show dominance when they are in distress, fearful, or feel agitated. Male alpacas are more aggressive than females, and tend to establish dominance within their herd group. In some cases, alpha males will immobilize the head and neck of a weaker or challenging male in order to show their strength and dominance.

 

In the textile industry, "alpaca" primarily refers to the hair of Peruvian alpacas, but more broadly it refers to a style of fabric originally made from alpaca hair, such as mohair, Icelandic sheep wool, or even high-quality wool from other breeds of sheep. In trade, distinctions are made between alpacas and the several styles of mohair and luster.

 

An adult alpaca generally is between 81 and 99 centimetres (32 and 39 inches) in height at the shoulders (withers). They usually weigh between 48 and 90 kilograms (106 and 198 pounds). Raised in the same conditions, the difference in weight can be small with males weighting around 22.3 kilograms (49 lb 3 oz) and females 21.3 kilograms (46 lb 15 oz).

 

Background

 

The relationship between alpacas and vicuñas was disputed for many years. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the four South American lamoid species were assigned scientific names. At that time, the alpaca was assumed to be descended from the llama, ignoring similarities in size, fleece and dentition between the alpaca and the vicuña. Classification was complicated by the fact that all four species of South American camelid can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. The advent of DNA technology made a more accurate classification possible.

 

In 2001, the alpaca genus classification changed from Lama pacos to Vicugna pacos, following the presentation of a paper on work by Miranda Kadwell et al. on alpaca DNA to the Royal Society showing the alpaca is descended from the vicuña, not the guanaco.

 

Origin and domestication

Alpacas were domesticated thousands of years ago. The Moche people of Northern Peru often used alpaca images in their art. There are no known wild alpacas, and its closest living relative, the vicuña (also native to South America), is the wild ancestor of the alpaca.

 

The family Camelidae first appeared in Americas 40–45 million years ago, during the Eocene period, from the common ancestor, Protylopus. The descendants divided into Camelini and Lamini tribes, taking different migratory patterns to Asia and South America, respectively. Although the camelids became extinct in North America around 3 million years ago, it flourished in the South with the species we see today. It was not until 2–5 million years ago, during the Pliocene, that the genus Hemiauchenia of the tribe Lamini split into Palaeolama and Lama; the latter would then split again into Lama and Vicugna upon migrating down to South America.

 

Remains of vicuña and guanaco dating around 12,000 years have been found throughout Peru. Their domesticated counterparts, the llama and alpaca, have been found mummified in the Moquegua valley, in the south of Peru, dating back 900 to 1000 years. Mummies found in this region show two breeds of alpacas. More precise analysis of bone and teeth of these mummies has demonstrated that alpacas were domesticated from the Vicugna vicugna. Other research, considering the behavioral and morphological characteristics of alpacas and their wild counterparts, seems to indicate that alpacas could find their origins in Lama guanicoe as well as Vicugna vicugna, or even a hybrid of both.

 

Genetic analysis shows a different picture of the origins of the alpaca. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA shows that most alpacas have guanaco mtDNA, and many also have vicuña mtDNA. But microsatellite data shows that alpaca DNA is much more similar to vicuña DNA than to guanaco DNA. This suggests that alpacas are descendants of the Vicugna vicugna, not of the Lama guanicoe. The discrepancy with mtDNA seems to be a result of the fact that mtDNA is only transmitted by the mother, and recent husbandry practices have caused hybridization between llamas (which primarily carry guanaco DNA) and alpacas. To the extent that many of today's domestic alpacas are the result of male alpacas bred to female llamas, this would explain the mtDNA consistent with guanacos. This situation has led to attempts to reclassify the alpaca as Vicugna pacos.

 

Breeds

The alpaca comes in two breeds, Suri and Huacaya, based on their fibers rather than scientific or European classifications.

(Museum of Osteology)

Huacaya alpacas are the most commonly found, constituting about 90% of the population. The Huacaya alpaca is thought to have originated in post-colonial Peru. This is due to their thicker fleece which makes them more suited to survive in the higher altitudes of the Andes after being pushed into the highlands of Peru with the arrival of the Spanish.

 

Suri alpacas represent a smaller portion of the total alpaca population, around 10%. They are thought to have been more prevalent in pre-Columbian Peru since they could be kept at a lower altitude where a thicker fleece was not needed for harsh weather conditions.

 

Behavior

 

Alpacas are social herd animals that live in family groups, consisting of a territorial alpha male, females, and their young ones. Alpacas warn the herd about intruders by making sharp, noisy inhalations that sound like a high-pitched bray. The herd may attack smaller predators with their front feet and can spit and kick. Their aggression towards members of the canid family (coyotes, foxes, dogs etc.) is exploited when alpacas are used as guard llamas for guarding sheep.

 

Alpacas can sometimes be aggressive, but they can also be very gentle, intelligent, and extremely observant. For the most part, alpacas are very quiet, but male alpacas are more energetic when they get involved in fighting with other alpacas. When they prey, they are cautious but also nervous when they feel any type of threat. They can feel threatened when a person or another alpaca comes up from behind them.

 

Alpacas set their own boundaries of "personal space" within their families and groups.They make a hierarchy in some sense, and each alpaca is aware of the dominant animals in each group. Body language is the key to their communication. It helps to maintain their order. One example of their body communication includes a pose named broadside, where their ears are pulled back and they stand sideways. This pose is used when male alpacas are defending their territory.

 

When they are young, they tend to follow larger objects and to sit near or under them. An example of this is a baby alpaca with its mother. This can also apply when an alpaca passes by an older alpaca.

 

Training

Alpacas are generally very trainable and usually respond to reward, most commonly in the form of food. They can usually be petted without getting agitated, especially if one avoids petting the head or neck. Alpacas are usually quite easy to herd, even in large groups. However, during herding, it is recommended for the handler to approach the animals slowly and quietly, as failing to do so can result in danger for both the animals and the handler.

 

Alpacas and llamas have started showing up in U.S. nursing homes and hospitals as trained, certified therapy animals. The Mayo Clinic says animal-assisted therapy can reduce pain, depression, anxiety, and fatigue. This type of animal therapy is growing in popularity, and there are several organizations throughout the United States that participate.

 

Spitting

Not all alpacas spit, but all are capable of doing so. "Spit" is somewhat euphemistic; occasionally the projectile contains only air and a little saliva, although alpacas commonly bring up acidic stomach contents (generally a green, grassy mix) and project it onto their chosen targets. Spitting is mostly reserved for other alpacas, but an alpaca will also occasionally spit at a human.

 

Spitting can result in what is called "sour mouth". Sour mouth is characterized by "a loose-hanging lower lip and a gaping mouth."

 

Alpacas can spit for several reasons. A female alpaca spits when she is not interested in a male alpaca, typically when she thinks that she is already impregnated. Both sexes of alpaca keep others away from their food, or anything they have their eyes on. Most give a slight warning before spitting by blowing air out and raising their heads, giving their ears a "pinned" appearance.

 

Alpacas can spit up to ten feet if they need to. For example, if another animal does not back off, the alpaca will throw up its stomach contents, resulting in a lot of spit.

 

Some signs of stress which can lead to their spitting habits include: humming, a wrinkle under their eye, drooling, rapid breathing, and stomping their feet. When alpacas show any sign of interest or alertness, they tend to sniff their surroundings, watch closely, or stand quietly in place and stare.

 

When it comes to reproduction, they spit because it is a response triggered by the progesterone levels being increased, which is associated with ovulation.

 

Hygiene

Alpacas use a communal dung pile, where they do not graze. This behaviour tends to limit the spread of internal parasites. Generally, males have much tidier, and fewer dung piles than females, which tend to stand in a line and all go at once. One female approaches the dung pile and begins to urinate and/or defecate, and the rest of the herd often follows. Alpaca waste is collected and used as garden fertilizer or even natural fertilizer.

 

Because of their preference for using a dung pile for excreting bodily waste, some alpacas have been successfully house-trained.

 

Alpacas develop dental hygiene problems which affect their eating and behavior. Warning signs include protracted chewing while eating, or food spilling out of their mouths. Poor body condition and sunken cheeks are also telltales of dental problems.

 

Alpacas make a variety of sounds:

 

Humming: When alpacas are born, the mother and baby hum constantly. They also hum as a sign of distress, especially when they are separated from their herd. Alpacas may also hum when curious, happy, worried or cautious.

Snorting: Alpacas snort when another alpaca is invading its space.

Grumbling: Alpacas grumble to warn each other. For example, when one is invading another's personal space, it sounds like gurgling.

Clucking: Similar to a hen's cluck, alpacas cluck when a mother is concerned for her cria. Male alpacas cluck to signal friendly behavior.

Screaming: Their screams are extremely deafening and loud. They will scream when they are not handled correctly or when they are being attacked by a potential enemy.

Screeching: A bird-like cry, presumably intended to terrify the opponent. This sound is typically used by male alpacas when they are in a fight over dominance. When a female screeches, it is more of a growl when she is angry.

 

Reproduction

Females are induced ovulators; meaning the act of mating and the presence of semen causes them to ovulate. Females usually conceive after just one breeding, but occasionally do have trouble conceiving. Artificial insemination is technically difficult, expensive and not common, but it can be accomplished. Embryo transfer is more widespread.

 

A male is usually ready to mate for the first time between two and three years of age. It is not advisable to allow a young female to be bred until she is mature and has reached two-thirds of her mature weight. Over-breeding a young female before conception is possibly a common cause of uterine infections. As the age of maturation varies greatly between individuals, it is usually recommended that novice breeders wait until females are 18 months of age or older before initiating breeding.

 

Alpacas can breed at any time throughout the year but it is more difficult to breed in the winter. Most breed during autumn or late spring. The most popular way to have alpacas mate is pen mating. Pen mating is when they move both the female and the desired male into a pen. Another way is paddock mating where one male alpaca is let loose in the paddock with several female alpacas.

 

The gestation period is, on average, 11.5 months, and usually results in a single offspring, or cria. Twins are rare, occurring about once per 1000 deliveries. Cria are generally between 15 and 19 pounds, and are standing 30 to 90 minutes after birth. After a female gives birth, she is generally receptive to breeding again after about two weeks. Crias may be weaned through human intervention at about six months old and 60 pounds, but many breeders prefer to allow the female to decide when to wean her offspring; they can be weaned earlier or later depending on their size and emotional maturity.

 

The average lifespan of an alpaca is between 15 and 20 years, and the longest-lived alpaca on record is 27 years.

  

Pests and diseases

Cattle tuberculosis can also infect alpacas: Mycobacterium bovis also causes TB in this species worldwide. Krajewska‐Wędzina et al., 2020 detect M. bovis in individuals traded from the United Kingdom to Poland. To accomplish this they develop a seroassay which correctly identifies positive subjects which are false negative for a common skin test. Krajewska‐Wędzina et al. also find that alpacas are unusual in mounting a competent early-infection immune response. Bernitz et al., 2021 believe this to generalise to all camelids.

 

Habitat and lifestyle

Alpacas can be found throughout most of South America. They typically live in temperate conditions in the mountains with high altitudes.

 

They are easy to care for since they are not limited to a specific type of environment. Animals such as flamingos, condors, spectacled bears, mountain lions, coyotes, llamas, and sheep live near alpacas when they are in their natural habitat.

 

Population

Alpacas are native to Peru, but can be found throughout the globe in captivity. Peru currently has the largest alpaca population, with over half the world's animals. The population declined drastically after the Spanish Conquistadors invaded the Andes mountains in 1532, after which 98% of the animals were destroyed. The Spanish also brought with them diseases that were fatal to alpacas.

 

European conquest forced the animals to move higher into the mountains, which remained there permanently. Although alpacas had almost been wiped out completely, they were rediscovered sometime during the 19th century by Europeans. After finding uses for them, the animals became important to societies during the industrial revolution.

 

In popular culture

Nuzzle and Scratch was a British children's television programme featuring two fictional alpacas that was first broadcast between 2008 and 2011.

 

Interest in alpacas grew as a result of Depp v. Heard, the 2022 trial in which Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation in Virginia after Heard wrote an op-ed saying she was a public victim of domestic violence. Depp testified, under oath, that he would not make another Pirates of the Caribbean film for "300 million dollars and a million alpacas".

 

Diet

 

Alpacas chew their food which ends up being mixed with their cud and saliva and then they swallow it. Alpacas usually eat 1.5% of their body weight daily for normal growth. They mainly need pasture grass, hay, or silage but some may also need supplemental energy and protein foods and they will also normally try to chew on almost anything (e.g. empty bottle). Most alpaca ranchers rotate their feeding grounds so the grass can regrow and fecal parasites may die before reusing the area. Pasture grass is a great source of protein. When seasons change, the grass loses or gains more protein. For example, in the spring, the pasture grass has about 20% protein while in the summer, it only has 6%. They need more energy supplements in the winter to produce body heat and warmth. They get their fiber from hay or from long stems which provides them with vitamin E. Green grass contains vitamin A and E.

 

Alpacas can eat natural unfertilized grass; however, ranchers can also supplement grass with low-protein grass hay. To provide selenium and other necessary vitamins, ranchers will feed their domestic alpacas a daily dose of grain to provide additional nutrients that are not fully obtained from their primary diet. Alpacas may obtain the necessary vitamins in their native grazing ranges.

 

Digestion

Alpacas, like other camelids, have a three-chambered stomach; combined with chewing cud, this three-chambered system allows maximum extraction of nutrients from low-quality forages. Alpacas are not ruminants, pseudo-ruminants, or modified ruminants, as there are many differences between the anatomy and physiology of a camelid and a ruminant stomach.

 

Alpacas will chew their food in a figure eight motion, swallow the food, and then pass it into one of the stomach's chambers. The first and second chambers (called C1 and C2) are anaerobic fermentation chambers where the fermentation process begins. The alpaca will further absorb nutrients and water in the first part of the third chamber. The end of the third chamber (called C3) is where the stomach secretes acids to digest food and is the likely place where an alpaca will have ulcers if stressed.

 

Poisonous plants

Many plants are poisonous to the alpaca, including the bracken fern, Madagascar ragwort, oleander, and some azaleas. In common with similar livestock, others include acorns, African rue, agave, amaryllis, autumn crocus, bear grass, broom snakeweed, buckwheat, ragweed, buttercups, calla lily, orange tree foliage, carnations, castor beans, and many others.

 

Fiber

Main article: Alpaca fiber

Alpacas are typically sheared once per year in the spring. Each shearing produces approximately 2.3 to 4.5 kilograms (5 to 10 pounds) of fiber per alpaca. An adult alpaca might produce 1.4 to 2.6 kilograms (50 to 90 ounces) of first-quality fiber as well as 1.4 to 2.8 kilograms (50 to 100 ounces) of second- and third-quality fiber. The quality of alpaca fiber is determined by how crimpy it is. Typically, the greater the number of small folds in the fiber, the greater the quality.

 

Prices

Alpacas were the subject of a speculative bubble between their introduction to North America in 1984 and the early 21st century. The price for American alpacas ranged from US$50 for a castrated male (gelding) to US$675,000 for the highest in the world, depending on breeding history, sex, and color. In 2006, researchers warned that the higher prices sought for alpaca breeding stock were largely speculative and not supported by market fundamentals, given the low inherent returns per head from the main end product, alpaca fiber, and prices into the $100s per head rather than $10,000s would be required for a commercially viable fiber production herd.

 

Marketed as "the investment you can hug" in television commercials by the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association, the market for alpacas was almost entirely dependent on breeding and selling animals to new buyers, a classic sign of speculative bubbles in livestock. The bubble burst in 2007, with the price of alpaca breeding stock dropping by thousands of dollars each year thereafter. Many farmers found themselves unable to sell animals for any price, or even give them away.

 

It is possible to raise up to 25 alpacas per hectare (10/acre), as they have a designated area for waste products and keep their eating area away from their waste area. However, this ratio differs from country to country and is highly dependent on the quality of pasture available (in many desert locations it is generally only possible to run one to three animals per acre due to lack of suitable vegetation). Fiber quality is the primary variant in the price achieved for alpaca wool; in Australia, it is common to classify the fiber by the thickness of the individual hairs and by the amount of vegetable matter contained in the supplied shearings.

 

Livestock

 

Alpacas need to eat 1–2% of their body weight per day, so about two 27 kg (60 lb) bales of grass hay per month per animal. When formulating a proper diet for alpacas, water and hay analysis should be performed to determine the proper vitamin and mineral supplementation program. Two options are to provide free choice salt/mineral powder or feed a specially formulated ration. Indigenous to the highest regions of the Andes, this harsh environment has created an extremely hardy animal, so only minimal housing and predator fencing are needed. The alpacas' three-chambered stomachs allow for extremely efficient digestion. There are no viable seeds in the manure, because alpacas prefer to only eat tender plant leaves, and will not consume thick plant stems; therefore, alpaca manure does not need composting to enrich pastures or ornamental landscaping. Nail and teeth trimming are needed every six to twelve months, along with annual shearing.

 

Similar to ruminants, such as cattle and sheep, alpacas have only lower teeth at the front of their mouths; therefore, they do not pull the grass up by the roots. Rotating pastures is still important, though, as alpacas have a tendency to regraze an area repeatedly. Alpacas are fiber-producing animals; they do not need to be slaughtered to reap their product, and their fiber is a renewable resource that grows yearly.

 

Cultural presence

 

Alpacas are closely tied to cultural practices for Andeans people. Prior to colonization, the image of the alpaca was used in rituals and in their religious practices. Since the people in the region depended heavily on these animals for their sustenance, the alpaca was seen as a gift from Pachamama. Alpacas were used for their meat, fibers for clothing, and art, and their images in the form of conopas.

 

Conopas take their appearance from the Suri alpacas, with long locks flanking their sides and bangs covering the eyes, and a depression on the back. This depression is used in ritual practices, usually filled with coca leaves and fat from alpacas and lamas, to bring fertility and luck. While their use was prevalent before colonization, the attempts to convert the Andean people to Catholicism led to the acquisition of more than 3,400 conopas in Lima alone.

 

The origin of alpacas is depicted in legend; the legend states they came to be in the world after a goddess fell in love with a man. The goddess' father only allowed her to be with her lover if he cared for her herd of alpacas. On top of caring for the herd, he was to always carry a small animal for his entire life. As the goddess came into our world, the alpacas followed her. Everything was fine until the man set the small animal down, and the goddess fled back to her home. On her way back home, the man attempted to stop her and her herd from fleeing. While he was not able to stop her from returning, he was able to stop a few alpacas from returning. These alpacas who did not make it back are said to be seen today in the swampy lands in the Andes waiting for the end of the world, so they may return to their goddess.

Masai Mara NR (Kenya)

The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), also called white-tufted marmoset or white-tufted-ear marmoset, is a New World monkey. It originally lived on the northeastern coast of Brazil, in the states of Piauí, Paraíba, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, Alagoas, and Bahia. Through release (both intentional and unintentional) of captive individuals, it has expanded its range since the 1920s to Southeast Brazil (its first sighting in the wild for Rio de Janeiro was in 1929), where it became an invasive species, raising concerns about genetic pollution of similar species, such as the buffy-tufted marmoset (Callithrix aurita), and predation upon bird nestlings and eggs.

 

The whole genome sequence of a female common marmoset was published on 20 July 2014. It became the first New World monkey to have its genome sequenced.

 

Common marmosets are very small monkeys with relatively long tails. Males are slightly larger than females; males have an average height of 188 mm (7.40 in) and females have an average height of 185 mm (7.28 in). Males weigh 256 g (9.03 oz) on average and females weigh 236 g (8.32 oz) on average. The pelage of the marmoset is multicolored, being sprinkled with brown, grey, and yellow. It also has white ear tufts and the tail is banded. Its face has black across the nose-area skin and a white blaze on the forehead. The coats of infants are brown and yellow with the ear tuft developing later.

 

As with other members of the genus Callithrix, the common marmosets have claw-like nails known as tegulae on most of their fingers. Only their halluces (big toes) have the flat nails or ungulae that most other primates have. Marmosets have an arboreal locomotion similar to squirrels. They can hang onto trees vertically and leap between them, and run across branches quadrupedally. Tegulae are an adaptation for this type of locomotion. Other Callithrix traits shared include enlarged, chisel-shaped incisors and ceca specialized for their diet.

 

Common marmosets are native only to east-central Brazil. They have been introduced into other areas and live within the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Marmosets can be found in a number of forest habitats. They live in Atlantic coastal forests as well as semideciduous forests farther inland. They can also inhabit savanna forests and riverine forests. Marmosets are successful in dry secondary forests and edge habitats.

 

The common marmoset's claw-like nails, incisor shape, and gut specialization reflect their unique diet, which is primarily made of plant exudates and insects. Common marmosets feed on gum, sap, latex, and resin. They use their nails to cling to the side of a tree, and with their long lower incisors, chew a hole in the tree. The marmoset then licks up the exudates or swoops them with the teeth. From 20 to 70% of the marmoset's feeding behavior includes eating exudates.

 

Exudates provide marmosets with a reliable food source in their seasonal habitat. They rely on these foods particularly between January and April, when fruit is not abundant. A marmoset may visit a tree hole multiple times, including those made by other animals. In addition to exudates, insects also prove an important food source for marmosets, making up 24-30% of their food. The small size of marmosets allows them to stalk and ambush them. Marmosets also eat fruits, seeds, flowers, fungi, nectar, snails, lizards, tree frogs, bird eggs, nestlings, and infant mammals. Marmosets may compete for fruit with birds, such as parrots and toucans, and with woolly opossums.

 

Common marmosets live in stable extended families, with only a few members allowed to breed. A marmoset group can contain as many as 15 members, but a more typical number is nine. A marmoset family usually contains one or two breeding females, a breeding male, their offspring, and their adult relatives, be they their parents or siblings. The females in a group tend to be closely related, and males less so. Males do not mate with breeding females to which they are related. Marmosets may leave their natal groups when they become adults, in contrast to other primate species, which leave at adolescence. Not much is known of the reasons marmosets leave their natal groups. Family groups fuse into new groups when a breeding male dies. Within the family groups, the breeding individuals tend to be more dominant. The breeding male and female tend to share dominance. Between two breeding females, though, one is more dominant. In addition, the subordinate female is usually the daughter of the dominant one. For the other members, social rank is based on age. Dominance is maintained though various behaviors, postures, and vocalizations, and subordinates groom their superiors.

 

Common marmosets have a complex mating system. They were thought to be monogamous, but both polygamy and polyandry have been observed. Nevertheless, most matings are monogamous. Even in groups with two breeding females, the subordinate female often mates with males from other groups. Subordinate females usually do not give birth to fit offspring. Mating with extra-group males may allow the female to find potential mates in the future. Females that mate successfully but lose their young move to other groups and may gain dominant breeding positions.

 

The breeding individuals in a group need the other members to help raise their young. Thus, the pair behaviorally and physiologically suppresses the reproduction of the other members of the group. Since these suppressed individuals are likely related to the breeding pair, they have an incentive to care for the young, as they share genes with them. In addition, the presence of a related male affects female ovulation. Female ovulation does not occur when their fathers are around, but does occur when an unrelated male is nearby, instead. They also display aggressive behavior towards their mothers, possibly to displace them.

 

When conditions are right for them to breed, adult females breed regularly for the rest of their lives. Females flick their tongues at males to solicit mating. The gestation period lasts for 5 months, and females are ready to breed again around 10 days after giving birth. Five months pass between each parturition, so they can give birth twice a year. Marmosets commonly give birth to nonidentical twins. Because of this, females are under stress during pregnancy and lactation, and need help from the other members of the family. Infant marmosets instinctively cling to their mother's back and do not voluntarily let go for the first two weeks. After that, they become very active and explore their environment. The breeding male (likely the father) begins handling the twins, and all members of the family care for them. In the following weeks, the young spend less time on their mother's back and more time moving around and playing. Infants are weaned at 3 months. At 5 months, they enter their juvenile stage, when they have more interactions with family members other than their parents, and rough play helps to establish their future status. Another set of infants may be born and the previous young carry and play with them. Marmosets become subadults between 9 and 14 months old, act like adults, and go through puberty. At 15 months, they reach adult size and are sexually mature, but cannot breed until they are dominant.

 

Common marmosets employ a number of vocal and visual communications. To signal alarm, aggression, and submission, marmosets use the "partially open mouth stare", "frown", and "slit-stare", respectively. To display fear or submission, marmosets flatten their ear tufts close to their heads. Marmosets have two alarm calls - a series of repeating calls that get higher with each call, known as "staccatos", and short, trickling calls given either intermittently or repeatedly, called "tsiks". Marmoset alarm calls tend to be short and high-pitched. Marmosets monitor and locate group members with vibrato-like, low-pitched, generic calls called "trills". Marmosets also employ "phees", which are whistle-like, generic calls. These serve to attract mates, keep groups together, defend territories, and locate missing group members. Marmosets use scent glands on their chests and anogenital regions to mark objects. These are meant to communicate social and reproductive status.

 

The common marmoset remains an abundant species and is not currently threatened, but its habitat had been degraded at a fast rate, with around 67% of the Cerrado region cleared for human use in the 1990s and around 80% cleared for cultivation more recently. In addition, marmosets are captured and traded as pets. Though popular as pets, they become difficult to control as they get older and are thus abandoned or killed. Common marmosets have also been used for medical experiments. They are used as such in Europe more so than in the United States, and are the most common nonhuman primates to be experimented on. They are used as model organisms in areas of research such as teratology, periodontal disease, reproduction, immunology, endocrinology, obesity, and aging.

 

In 2014, a female became the first nonhuman primate, among the New World monkeys, to have its complete genome sequenced. The genome size is 2.26 Gbp, and contains 21,168 genes. Segmental duplications added a total of 138 Mb of nonredundant sequences (4.7% of the whole genome), slightly fewer than observed in humans or chimpanzees (about 5%), but more than in orangutans (3.8%).

Stockgrove 11/12/2019 SP91722914

Eastern gray squirrel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conservation status

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[2]

Scientific classificationedit

Kingdom:Animalia

Phylum:Chordata

Class:Mammalia

Order:Rodentia

Family:Sciuridae

Genus:Sciurus

Subgenus:Sciurus

Species:S. carolinensis

Binomial name

Sciurus carolinensis

Gmelin, 1788

Subspecies

S. c. carolinensis

S. c. extimus

S. c. fuliginosus

S. c. hypophaeus

S. c. pennsylvanicus

Sciurus carolinensis range map.svg

Range in red

(excludes introduced populations)[clarification needed]

Synonyms

S. pennsylvanica

S. hiemalis

S. leucotis

S. fulginosus

S. migratorius

The eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), also known as the grey squirrel depending on region, is a tree squirrel in the genus Sciurus. It is native to eastern North America, where it is the most prodigious and ecologically essential natural forest regenerator.[3][4] Widely introduced to certain places around the world, the eastern gray squirrel in Europe, in particular, is regarded as an invasive species.

  

Distribution

Sciurus carolinensis is native to the eastern and midwestern United States, and to the southerly portions of the eastern provinces of Canada[clarification needed]. The native range of the eastern gray squirrel overlaps with that of the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), with which it is sometimes confused, although the core of the fox squirrel's range is slightly more to the west. The eastern gray squirrel is found from New Brunswick, through southwestern Quebec and throughout southern Ontario plus in southern Manitoba, south to East Texas and Florida.[2] Breeding eastern gray squirrels are found in Nova Scotia, but whether this population was introduced or came from natural range expansion is not known.[5] It has also been introduced into Ireland,[6] Britain, Italy, South Africa, and Australia (where it was extirpated by 1973).[2] Eastern gray squirrels in Europe are a concern because they have displaced some of the native squirrels there. In 1966, this squirrel was also introduced to Vancouver Island in Western Canada in the area of Metchosin, and has spread widely from there. They are considered highly invasive and a threat to both the local ecosystem and the native red squirrel.[7]

 

A prolific and adaptable species, the eastern gray squirrel has also been introduced to, and thrives in, several regions of the western United States. The gray squirrel is an invasive species in Britain; it has spread across the country and has largely displaced the native red squirrel, S. vulgaris. In Ireland, the red squirrel has been displaced in several eastern counties, though it still remains common in the south and west of the country.[8] That such a displacement might happen in Italy is of concern, as gray squirrels might spread to other parts of mainland Europe.[9]

 

Etymology

The generic name, Sciurus, is derived from two Greek words, skia, meaning shadow, and oura, meaning tail. This name alludes to the squirrel sitting in the shadow of its tail.[10] The specific epithet, carolinensis, refers to the Carolinas, where the species was first recorded and where the animal is still extremely common. In the United Kingdom and Canada, it is simply referred to as the "grey squirrel". In the US, "eastern" is used to differentiate the species from the western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus).

 

Description

 

Bounding tracks in concrete

 

Close-up of an eastern gray squirrel's head; note the brownish fur on its face, the gray fur on its back and the white fur on its underside.

 

Melanistic eastern gray squirrel carrying a peanut

The eastern gray squirrel has predominantly gray fur, but it can have a brownish color. It has a usual white underside as compared to the typical brownish-orange underside of the fox squirrel.[11] It has a large bushy tail. Particularly in urban situations where the risk of predation is reduced, both white[12] – and black-colored individuals are quite often found. The melanistic form, which is almost entirely black, is predominant in certain populations and in certain geographic areas, such as in large parts of southeastern Canada. Melanistic squirrels appear to exhibit a higher cold tolerance than the common gray morph; when exposed to -10 °C, black squirrels showed an 18% reduction in heat loss, a 20% reduction in basal metabolic rate, and an 11% increase to non-shivering thermogenesis capacity when compared to the common gray morph.[13] Genetic variations within these include individuals with black tails and black-colored squirrels with white tails. (See tree squirrel for more information on these color variations.)

 

The head and body length is from 23 to 30 cm (9.1 to 11.8 in), the tail from 19 to 25 cm (7.5 to 9.8 in), and the adult weight varies between 400 and 600 g (14 and 21 oz).[14][15] They do not display sexual dimorphism, meaning there is no gender difference in size or coloration.[16]

 

The tracks of an eastern gray squirrel are difficult to distinguish from the related fox squirrel and Abert's squirrel, though the latter's range is almost entirely different from the gray's. Like all squirrels, the eastern gray shows four toes on the front feet and five on the hind feet. The hind foot-pad is often not visible in the track. When bounding or moving at speed, the front foot tracks will be behind the hind foot tracks. The bounding stride can be two to three feet long.[17]

 

The dental formula of the eastern gray squirrel is 1023/1013 (Upper teeth/Lower Teeth).[13]

 

1.0.2.3

1.0.1.3

× 2 = 22 total teeth.

 

Incisors exhibit indeterminate growth, meaning they grow consistently throughout life, and their cheek teeth exhibit brachydont (low-crowned teeth) and bunodont (having tubercles on crowns) structures.[13]

 

Behavior

 

Reaching out for food on a garden bird feeder, this squirrel can rotate its hind feet, allowing it to descend a tree head-first.

Like many members of the family Sciuridae, the eastern gray squirrel is a scatter-hoarder; it hoards food in numerous small caches for later recovery.[2] Some caches are quite temporary, especially those made near the site of a sudden abundance of food which can be retrieved within hours or days for reburial in a more secure site. Others are more permanent and are not retrieved until months later. Each squirrel is estimated to make several thousand caches each season. The squirrels have very accurate spatial memory for the locations of these caches, and use distant and nearby landmarks to retrieve them. Smell is used partly to uncover food caches, and also to find food in other squirrels' caches. Scent can be unreliable when the ground is too dry or covered in snow.[18]

 

Squirrels sometimes use deceptive behavior to prevent other animals from retrieving cached food. They will pretend to bury the object if they feel that they are being watched. They do this by preparing the spot as usual, for instance, digging a hole or widening a crack, miming the placement of the food, while actually concealing it in their mouths, and then covering up the "cache" as if they had deposited the object. They also hide behind vegetation while burying food or hide it high up in trees (if their rival is not arboreal). Such a complex repertoire suggests that the behaviors are not innate, and imply theory of mind thinking.[19][20]

 

The eastern gray squirrel is one of very few mammalian species that can descend a tree head-first. It does this by turning its feet so the claws of its hind paws are backward-pointing and can grip the tree bark.[21][22]

 

Eastern gray squirrels build a type of nest, known as a drey, in the forks of trees, consisting mainly of dry leaves and twigs. The dreys are roughly spherical, about 30~60 cm in diameter and are usually insulated with moss, thistledown, dried grass, and feathers to reduce heat loss.[16] Males and females may share the same nest for short times during the breeding season, and during cold winter spells. Squirrels may share a drey to stay warm. They may also nest in the attic or exterior walls of a house, where they may be regarded as pests, as well as fire hazards due to their habit of gnawing on electrical cables. In addition, squirrels may inhabit a permanent tree den hollowed out in the trunk or a large branch of a tree.[23]

 

Eastern gray squirrels are crepuscular,[15] or more active during the early and late hours of the day, and tend to avoid the heat in the middle of a summer day.[23] They do not hibernate.[24]

 

Predation

Predators include humans, hawks, weasels, raccoons, foxes, domestic and feral cats, snakes, owls, and dogs.[23] In its introduced range in South Africa, it has been preyed on by African harrier-hawks.[25]

 

Reproduction

 

Eastern gray squirrels are born hairless with their eyes closed.

Eastern gray squirrels can breed twice a year, but younger and less experienced mothers normally have a single litter per year in the spring. Depending on forage availability, older and more experienced females may breed again in summer.[26] In a year of abundant food, 36% of females bear two litters, but none will do so in a year of poor food.[27] Their breeding seasons are December to February and May to June, though this is slightly delayed in more northern latitudes.[15][23] The first litter is born in February or March, the second in June or July, though, again, bearing may be advanced or delayed by a few weeks depending on climate, temperature, and forage availability. In any given breeding season, an average of 61 – 66% of females bear young.[27] If a female fails to conceive or loses her young to unusually cold weather or predation, she re-enters estrus and has a later litter. Five days before a female enters estrus, she may attract up to 34 males from up to 500 meters away. Eastern gray squirrels exhibit a form of polygyny, in which the competing males will form a hierarchy of dominance, and the female will mate with multiple males depending on the hierarchy established.[13]

  

Eastern gray squirrel drey

Normally, one to four young are born in each litter, but the largest possible litter size is eight.[27] The gestation period is about 44 days.[27] The young are weaned around 10 weeks, though some may wean up to six weeks later in the wild. They begin to leave the nest after 12 weeks, with autumn born young often wintering with their mother. Only one in four squirrel kits survives to one year of age, with mortality around 55% for the following year. Mortality rates then decrease to around 30% for following years until they increase sharply at eight years of age.[27]

 

Rarely, eastern gray females can enter estrus as early as five and a half months old,[23] but females are not normally fertile until at least one year of age. Their mean age of first estrus is 1.25 years.[27] The presence of a fertile male will induce ovulation in a female going through estrus.[13] Male eastern grays are sexually mature between one and two years of age.[28] Reproductive longevity for females appears to be over 8 years, with 12.5 years documented in North Carolina.[13] These squirrels can live to be 20 years old in captivity, but in the wild live much shorter lives due to predation and the challenges of their habitat. At birth, their life expectancy is 1–2 years, an adult typically can live to be six, with exceptional individuals making it to 12 years.

 

Growth and ontogeny

 

Juvenile eastern gray squirrel developing fur

Newborn gray squirrels weigh 13-18 grams and are entirely hairless and pink, although vibrissae are present at birth. 7–10 days postpartum, the skin begins to darken, just before the juvenile pelage grows in. Lower incisors erupt 19–21 days postpartum, while upper incisors erupt after 4 weeks. Cheek teeth erupt during week 6. Eyes open after 21–42 days, and ears open 3–4 weeks postpartum. Weaning is initiated around 7 weeks postpartum, and is usually finished by week 10, followed by the loss of the juvenile pelage. Full adult body mass is achieved by 8–9 months after birth.[13]

 

Communication

MENU0:00

Calls recorded in Surrey, England

As in most other mammals, communication among eastern gray squirrel individuals involves both vocalizations and posturing. The species has a quite varied repertoire of vocalizations, including a squeak similar to that of a mouse, a low-pitched noise, a chatter, and a raspy "mehr mehr mehr". Other methods of communication include tail-flicking and other gestures, including facial expressions. Tail flicking and the "kuk" or "quaa" call are used to ward off and warn other squirrels about predators, as well as to announce when a predator is leaving the area.[29] Squirrels also make an affectionate coo-purring sound that biologists call the "muk-muk" sound. This is used as a contact sound between a mother and her kits and in adulthood, by the male when he courts the female during mating season.[29]

 

The use of vocal and visual communication has been shown to vary by location, based on elements such as noise pollution and the amount of open space. For instance, populations living in large cities generally rely more on the visual signals, due to the generally louder environment with more areas without much visual restriction. However, in heavily wooded areas, vocal signals are used more often due to the relatively lower noise levels and a dense canopy restricting visual range.[30]

The alpaca (Lama pacos) is a species of South American camelid mammal. It is similar to, and often confused with, the llama. However, alpacas are often noticeably smaller than llamas. The two animals are closely related and can successfully crossbreed. Both species are believed to have been domesticated from their wild relatives, the vicuña and guanaco. There are two breeds of alpaca: the Suri alpaca and the Huacaya alpaca.

 

Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of Southern Peru, Western Bolivia, Ecuador, and Northern Chile at an altitude of 3,500 to 5,000 metres (11,000 to 16,000 feet) above sea level. Alpacas are considerably smaller than llamas, and unlike llamas, they were not bred to be working animals, but were bred specifically for their fiber. Alpaca fiber is used for making knitted and woven items, similar to sheep's wool. These items include blankets, sweaters, hats, gloves, scarves, a wide variety of textiles, and ponchos, in South America, as well as sweaters, socks, coats, and bedding in other parts of the world. The fiber comes in more than 52 natural colors as classified in Peru, 12 as classified in Australia, and 16 as classified in the United States.

 

Alpacas communicate through body language. The most common is spitting to show dominance when they are in distress, fearful, or feel agitated. Male alpacas are more aggressive than females, and tend to establish dominance within their herd group. In some cases, alpha males will immobilize the head and neck of a weaker or challenging male in order to show their strength and dominance.

 

In the textile industry, "alpaca" primarily refers to the hair of Peruvian alpacas, but more broadly it refers to a style of fabric originally made from alpaca hair, such as mohair, Icelandic sheep wool, or even high-quality wool from other breeds of sheep. In trade, distinctions are made between alpacas and the several styles of mohair and luster.

 

An adult alpaca generally is between 81 and 99 centimetres (32 and 39 inches) in height at the shoulders (withers). They usually weigh between 48 and 90 kilograms (106 and 198 pounds). Raised in the same conditions, the difference in weight can be small with males weighting around 22.3 kilograms (49 lb 3 oz) and females 21.3 kilograms (46 lb 15 oz).

 

Background

 

The relationship between alpacas and vicuñas was disputed for many years. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the four South American lamoid species were assigned scientific names. At that time, the alpaca was assumed to be descended from the llama, ignoring similarities in size, fleece and dentition between the alpaca and the vicuña. Classification was complicated by the fact that all four species of South American camelid can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. The advent of DNA technology made a more accurate classification possible.

 

In 2001, the alpaca genus classification changed from Lama pacos to Vicugna pacos, following the presentation of a paper on work by Miranda Kadwell et al. on alpaca DNA to the Royal Society showing the alpaca is descended from the vicuña, not the guanaco.

 

Origin and domestication

Alpacas were domesticated thousands of years ago. The Moche people of Northern Peru often used alpaca images in their art. There are no known wild alpacas, and its closest living relative, the vicuña (also native to South America), is the wild ancestor of the alpaca.

 

The family Camelidae first appeared in Americas 40–45 million years ago, during the Eocene period, from the common ancestor, Protylopus. The descendants divided into Camelini and Lamini tribes, taking different migratory patterns to Asia and South America, respectively. Although the camelids became extinct in North America around 3 million years ago, it flourished in the South with the species we see today. It was not until 2–5 million years ago, during the Pliocene, that the genus Hemiauchenia of the tribe Lamini split into Palaeolama and Lama; the latter would then split again into Lama and Vicugna upon migrating down to South America.

 

Remains of vicuña and guanaco dating around 12,000 years have been found throughout Peru. Their domesticated counterparts, the llama and alpaca, have been found mummified in the Moquegua valley, in the south of Peru, dating back 900 to 1000 years. Mummies found in this region show two breeds of alpacas. More precise analysis of bone and teeth of these mummies has demonstrated that alpacas were domesticated from the Vicugna vicugna. Other research, considering the behavioral and morphological characteristics of alpacas and their wild counterparts, seems to indicate that alpacas could find their origins in Lama guanicoe as well as Vicugna vicugna, or even a hybrid of both.

 

Genetic analysis shows a different picture of the origins of the alpaca. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA shows that most alpacas have guanaco mtDNA, and many also have vicuña mtDNA. But microsatellite data shows that alpaca DNA is much more similar to vicuña DNA than to guanaco DNA. This suggests that alpacas are descendants of the Vicugna vicugna, not of the Lama guanicoe. The discrepancy with mtDNA seems to be a result of the fact that mtDNA is only transmitted by the mother, and recent husbandry practices have caused hybridization between llamas (which primarily carry guanaco DNA) and alpacas. To the extent that many of today's domestic alpacas are the result of male alpacas bred to female llamas, this would explain the mtDNA consistent with guanacos. This situation has led to attempts to reclassify the alpaca as Vicugna pacos.

 

Breeds

The alpaca comes in two breeds, Suri and Huacaya, based on their fibers rather than scientific or European classifications.

(Museum of Osteology)

Huacaya alpacas are the most commonly found, constituting about 90% of the population. The Huacaya alpaca is thought to have originated in post-colonial Peru. This is due to their thicker fleece which makes them more suited to survive in the higher altitudes of the Andes after being pushed into the highlands of Peru with the arrival of the Spanish.

 

Suri alpacas represent a smaller portion of the total alpaca population, around 10%. They are thought to have been more prevalent in pre-Columbian Peru since they could be kept at a lower altitude where a thicker fleece was not needed for harsh weather conditions.

 

Behavior

 

Alpacas are social herd animals that live in family groups, consisting of a territorial alpha male, females, and their young ones. Alpacas warn the herd about intruders by making sharp, noisy inhalations that sound like a high-pitched bray. The herd may attack smaller predators with their front feet and can spit and kick. Their aggression towards members of the canid family (coyotes, foxes, dogs etc.) is exploited when alpacas are used as guard llamas for guarding sheep.

 

Alpacas can sometimes be aggressive, but they can also be very gentle, intelligent, and extremely observant. For the most part, alpacas are very quiet, but male alpacas are more energetic when they get involved in fighting with other alpacas. When they prey, they are cautious but also nervous when they feel any type of threat. They can feel threatened when a person or another alpaca comes up from behind them.

 

Alpacas set their own boundaries of "personal space" within their families and groups.They make a hierarchy in some sense, and each alpaca is aware of the dominant animals in each group. Body language is the key to their communication. It helps to maintain their order. One example of their body communication includes a pose named broadside, where their ears are pulled back and they stand sideways. This pose is used when male alpacas are defending their territory.

 

When they are young, they tend to follow larger objects and to sit near or under them. An example of this is a baby alpaca with its mother. This can also apply when an alpaca passes by an older alpaca.

 

Training

Alpacas are generally very trainable and usually respond to reward, most commonly in the form of food. They can usually be petted without getting agitated, especially if one avoids petting the head or neck. Alpacas are usually quite easy to herd, even in large groups. However, during herding, it is recommended for the handler to approach the animals slowly and quietly, as failing to do so can result in danger for both the animals and the handler.

 

Alpacas and llamas have started showing up in U.S. nursing homes and hospitals as trained, certified therapy animals. The Mayo Clinic says animal-assisted therapy can reduce pain, depression, anxiety, and fatigue. This type of animal therapy is growing in popularity, and there are several organizations throughout the United States that participate.

 

Spitting

Not all alpacas spit, but all are capable of doing so. "Spit" is somewhat euphemistic; occasionally the projectile contains only air and a little saliva, although alpacas commonly bring up acidic stomach contents (generally a green, grassy mix) and project it onto their chosen targets. Spitting is mostly reserved for other alpacas, but an alpaca will also occasionally spit at a human.

 

Spitting can result in what is called "sour mouth". Sour mouth is characterized by "a loose-hanging lower lip and a gaping mouth."

 

Alpacas can spit for several reasons. A female alpaca spits when she is not interested in a male alpaca, typically when she thinks that she is already impregnated. Both sexes of alpaca keep others away from their food, or anything they have their eyes on. Most give a slight warning before spitting by blowing air out and raising their heads, giving their ears a "pinned" appearance.

 

Alpacas can spit up to ten feet if they need to. For example, if another animal does not back off, the alpaca will throw up its stomach contents, resulting in a lot of spit.

 

Some signs of stress which can lead to their spitting habits include: humming, a wrinkle under their eye, drooling, rapid breathing, and stomping their feet. When alpacas show any sign of interest or alertness, they tend to sniff their surroundings, watch closely, or stand quietly in place and stare.

 

When it comes to reproduction, they spit because it is a response triggered by the progesterone levels being increased, which is associated with ovulation.

 

Hygiene

Alpacas use a communal dung pile, where they do not graze. This behaviour tends to limit the spread of internal parasites. Generally, males have much tidier, and fewer dung piles than females, which tend to stand in a line and all go at once. One female approaches the dung pile and begins to urinate and/or defecate, and the rest of the herd often follows. Alpaca waste is collected and used as garden fertilizer or even natural fertilizer.

 

Because of their preference for using a dung pile for excreting bodily waste, some alpacas have been successfully house-trained.

 

Alpacas develop dental hygiene problems which affect their eating and behavior. Warning signs include protracted chewing while eating, or food spilling out of their mouths. Poor body condition and sunken cheeks are also telltales of dental problems.

 

Alpacas make a variety of sounds:

 

Humming: When alpacas are born, the mother and baby hum constantly. They also hum as a sign of distress, especially when they are separated from their herd. Alpacas may also hum when curious, happy, worried or cautious.

Snorting: Alpacas snort when another alpaca is invading its space.

Grumbling: Alpacas grumble to warn each other. For example, when one is invading another's personal space, it sounds like gurgling.

Clucking: Similar to a hen's cluck, alpacas cluck when a mother is concerned for her cria. Male alpacas cluck to signal friendly behavior.

Screaming: Their screams are extremely deafening and loud. They will scream when they are not handled correctly or when they are being attacked by a potential enemy.

Screeching: A bird-like cry, presumably intended to terrify the opponent. This sound is typically used by male alpacas when they are in a fight over dominance. When a female screeches, it is more of a growl when she is angry.

 

Reproduction

Females are induced ovulators; meaning the act of mating and the presence of semen causes them to ovulate. Females usually conceive after just one breeding, but occasionally do have trouble conceiving. Artificial insemination is technically difficult, expensive and not common, but it can be accomplished. Embryo transfer is more widespread.

 

A male is usually ready to mate for the first time between two and three years of age. It is not advisable to allow a young female to be bred until she is mature and has reached two-thirds of her mature weight. Over-breeding a young female before conception is possibly a common cause of uterine infections. As the age of maturation varies greatly between individuals, it is usually recommended that novice breeders wait until females are 18 months of age or older before initiating breeding.

 

Alpacas can breed at any time throughout the year but it is more difficult to breed in the winter. Most breed during autumn or late spring. The most popular way to have alpacas mate is pen mating. Pen mating is when they move both the female and the desired male into a pen. Another way is paddock mating where one male alpaca is let loose in the paddock with several female alpacas.

 

The gestation period is, on average, 11.5 months, and usually results in a single offspring, or cria. Twins are rare, occurring about once per 1000 deliveries. Cria are generally between 15 and 19 pounds, and are standing 30 to 90 minutes after birth. After a female gives birth, she is generally receptive to breeding again after about two weeks. Crias may be weaned through human intervention at about six months old and 60 pounds, but many breeders prefer to allow the female to decide when to wean her offspring; they can be weaned earlier or later depending on their size and emotional maturity.

 

The average lifespan of an alpaca is between 15 and 20 years, and the longest-lived alpaca on record is 27 years.

  

Pests and diseases

Cattle tuberculosis can also infect alpacas: Mycobacterium bovis also causes TB in this species worldwide. Krajewska‐Wędzina et al., 2020 detect M. bovis in individuals traded from the United Kingdom to Poland. To accomplish this they develop a seroassay which correctly identifies positive subjects which are false negative for a common skin test. Krajewska‐Wędzina et al. also find that alpacas are unusual in mounting a competent early-infection immune response. Bernitz et al., 2021 believe this to generalise to all camelids.

 

Habitat and lifestyle

Alpacas can be found throughout most of South America. They typically live in temperate conditions in the mountains with high altitudes.

 

They are easy to care for since they are not limited to a specific type of environment. Animals such as flamingos, condors, spectacled bears, mountain lions, coyotes, llamas, and sheep live near alpacas when they are in their natural habitat.

 

Population

Alpacas are native to Peru, but can be found throughout the globe in captivity. Peru currently has the largest alpaca population, with over half the world's animals. The population declined drastically after the Spanish Conquistadors invaded the Andes mountains in 1532, after which 98% of the animals were destroyed. The Spanish also brought with them diseases that were fatal to alpacas.

 

European conquest forced the animals to move higher into the mountains, which remained there permanently. Although alpacas had almost been wiped out completely, they were rediscovered sometime during the 19th century by Europeans. After finding uses for them, the animals became important to societies during the industrial revolution.

 

In popular culture

Nuzzle and Scratch was a British children's television programme featuring two fictional alpacas that was first broadcast between 2008 and 2011.

 

Interest in alpacas grew as a result of Depp v. Heard, the 2022 trial in which Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation in Virginia after Heard wrote an op-ed saying she was a public victim of domestic violence. Depp testified, under oath, that he would not make another Pirates of the Caribbean film for "300 million dollars and a million alpacas".

 

Diet

 

Alpacas chew their food which ends up being mixed with their cud and saliva and then they swallow it. Alpacas usually eat 1.5% of their body weight daily for normal growth. They mainly need pasture grass, hay, or silage but some may also need supplemental energy and protein foods and they will also normally try to chew on almost anything (e.g. empty bottle). Most alpaca ranchers rotate their feeding grounds so the grass can regrow and fecal parasites may die before reusing the area. Pasture grass is a great source of protein. When seasons change, the grass loses or gains more protein. For example, in the spring, the pasture grass has about 20% protein while in the summer, it only has 6%. They need more energy supplements in the winter to produce body heat and warmth. They get their fiber from hay or from long stems which provides them with vitamin E. Green grass contains vitamin A and E.

 

Alpacas can eat natural unfertilized grass; however, ranchers can also supplement grass with low-protein grass hay. To provide selenium and other necessary vitamins, ranchers will feed their domestic alpacas a daily dose of grain to provide additional nutrients that are not fully obtained from their primary diet. Alpacas may obtain the necessary vitamins in their native grazing ranges.

 

Digestion

Alpacas, like other camelids, have a three-chambered stomach; combined with chewing cud, this three-chambered system allows maximum extraction of nutrients from low-quality forages. Alpacas are not ruminants, pseudo-ruminants, or modified ruminants, as there are many differences between the anatomy and physiology of a camelid and a ruminant stomach.

 

Alpacas will chew their food in a figure eight motion, swallow the food, and then pass it into one of the stomach's chambers. The first and second chambers (called C1 and C2) are anaerobic fermentation chambers where the fermentation process begins. The alpaca will further absorb nutrients and water in the first part of the third chamber. The end of the third chamber (called C3) is where the stomach secretes acids to digest food and is the likely place where an alpaca will have ulcers if stressed.

 

Poisonous plants

Many plants are poisonous to the alpaca, including the bracken fern, Madagascar ragwort, oleander, and some azaleas. In common with similar livestock, others include acorns, African rue, agave, amaryllis, autumn crocus, bear grass, broom snakeweed, buckwheat, ragweed, buttercups, calla lily, orange tree foliage, carnations, castor beans, and many others.

 

Fiber

Main article: Alpaca fiber

Alpacas are typically sheared once per year in the spring. Each shearing produces approximately 2.3 to 4.5 kilograms (5 to 10 pounds) of fiber per alpaca. An adult alpaca might produce 1.4 to 2.6 kilograms (50 to 90 ounces) of first-quality fiber as well as 1.4 to 2.8 kilograms (50 to 100 ounces) of second- and third-quality fiber. The quality of alpaca fiber is determined by how crimpy it is. Typically, the greater the number of small folds in the fiber, the greater the quality.

 

Prices

Alpacas were the subject of a speculative bubble between their introduction to North America in 1984 and the early 21st century. The price for American alpacas ranged from US$50 for a castrated male (gelding) to US$675,000 for the highest in the world, depending on breeding history, sex, and color. In 2006, researchers warned that the higher prices sought for alpaca breeding stock were largely speculative and not supported by market fundamentals, given the low inherent returns per head from the main end product, alpaca fiber, and prices into the $100s per head rather than $10,000s would be required for a commercially viable fiber production herd.

 

Marketed as "the investment you can hug" in television commercials by the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association, the market for alpacas was almost entirely dependent on breeding and selling animals to new buyers, a classic sign of speculative bubbles in livestock. The bubble burst in 2007, with the price of alpaca breeding stock dropping by thousands of dollars each year thereafter. Many farmers found themselves unable to sell animals for any price, or even give them away.

 

It is possible to raise up to 25 alpacas per hectare (10/acre), as they have a designated area for waste products and keep their eating area away from their waste area. However, this ratio differs from country to country and is highly dependent on the quality of pasture available (in many desert locations it is generally only possible to run one to three animals per acre due to lack of suitable vegetation). Fiber quality is the primary variant in the price achieved for alpaca wool; in Australia, it is common to classify the fiber by the thickness of the individual hairs and by the amount of vegetable matter contained in the supplied shearings.

 

Livestock

 

Alpacas need to eat 1–2% of their body weight per day, so about two 27 kg (60 lb) bales of grass hay per month per animal. When formulating a proper diet for alpacas, water and hay analysis should be performed to determine the proper vitamin and mineral supplementation program. Two options are to provide free choice salt/mineral powder or feed a specially formulated ration. Indigenous to the highest regions of the Andes, this harsh environment has created an extremely hardy animal, so only minimal housing and predator fencing are needed. The alpacas' three-chambered stomachs allow for extremely efficient digestion. There are no viable seeds in the manure, because alpacas prefer to only eat tender plant leaves, and will not consume thick plant stems; therefore, alpaca manure does not need composting to enrich pastures or ornamental landscaping. Nail and teeth trimming are needed every six to twelve months, along with annual shearing.

 

Similar to ruminants, such as cattle and sheep, alpacas have only lower teeth at the front of their mouths; therefore, they do not pull the grass up by the roots. Rotating pastures is still important, though, as alpacas have a tendency to regraze an area repeatedly. Alpacas are fiber-producing animals; they do not need to be slaughtered to reap their product, and their fiber is a renewable resource that grows yearly.

 

Cultural presence

 

Alpacas are closely tied to cultural practices for Andeans people. Prior to colonization, the image of the alpaca was used in rituals and in their religious practices. Since the people in the region depended heavily on these animals for their sustenance, the alpaca was seen as a gift from Pachamama. Alpacas were used for their meat, fibers for clothing, and art, and their images in the form of conopas.

 

Conopas take their appearance from the Suri alpacas, with long locks flanking their sides and bangs covering the eyes, and a depression on the back. This depression is used in ritual practices, usually filled with coca leaves and fat from alpacas and lamas, to bring fertility and luck. While their use was prevalent before colonization, the attempts to convert the Andean people to Catholicism led to the acquisition of more than 3,400 conopas in Lima alone.

 

The origin of alpacas is depicted in legend; the legend states they came to be in the world after a goddess fell in love with a man. The goddess' father only allowed her to be with her lover if he cared for her herd of alpacas. On top of caring for the herd, he was to always carry a small animal for his entire life. As the goddess came into our world, the alpacas followed her. Everything was fine until the man set the small animal down, and the goddess fled back to her home. On her way back home, the man attempted to stop her and her herd from fleeing. While he was not able to stop her from returning, he was able to stop a few alpacas from returning. These alpacas who did not make it back are said to be seen today in the swampy lands in the Andes waiting for the end of the world, so they may return to their goddess.

From last year's archives.A scene which is common for Delhites who have some green patch around their homes!

 

I present to you this beautiful scene I found unfolding on a tree trunk. It was a sunny and cool January afternoon and I was on my regular stroll.I loved the way the sunlight streamed in illuminating just the couple while the background was thrown into shadows.

Notes:Squirrels Courtship

For many tree squirrels and flying squirrels courtship involves a mating chase. One to many males are attracted to an estrous (the periodic state of sexual excitement in the female of most mammals, excluding humans, that immediately precedes ovulation) female by various cues including her vocalization, behavior and odour. As the male congregates near the female, they jockey for the best position which is the closest to her possible. Although the dominant male tries to cautiously approach her, she would fend him off. At the same time he must watch his back and defend his position from other males. A stalemate will arise and without warning the female would run away, those males who can continue will try to keep up with her. This is commonly observed –wherein a female is seen bounding quickly up a tree or across the yard to a hiding place, while a chaos of males flee after her trying to locate her. The male gives out a characteristic call while hunting for the female mostly on the basis of her scent.

 

The first male to locate the female will mate with her. If another male happens to discover the couple, he will rush and try to destroy the scene.Sometimes the attack can be quite vicious where the the female too could get hurt. The chase is mostly done by dominant males, but younger squirrels(less than 2.5 yrs) also mate. Studies from University of Kansas recorded a smart strategy adopted by these young males. They would hang about in the females home range but wouldn’t take part in the chase. Once the female breaks away from the chase group the young smarties would go looking for her. They have a high chance of finding her and mating with her.

 

Researchers also tried to address the question, “Does the female choose the male or males with whom she mates?” some studies do point out that the female has the power to reject her suitor, thus even suggesting the inappropriateness of a mating chase and suggestion of scenario wherein the female actually leads the male on.

 

Thanks for looking in.

Have a fantastic week ahead:)

Notes Source:Thorington Jr.,Richard.W.and Ferrel, Katie.(2006).“Squirrel – The Animal Answer Guide”,208(pp), The John Hopkins University Press,Maryland

Bob came home drunk one night, slid into bed beside his sleeping wife, and fell into a deep slumber..

 

He awoke before the Pearly Gates, where St. Peter said, 'You died in your sleep, Bob.....'

 

Bob was stunned. 'I'm dead? No, I can't be! I've got too much to live for. Send me back!'

 

St. Peter said, 'I'm sorry, but there's only one way you can go back, and that is as a chicken.'

 

Bob was devastated, but begged St. Peter to send him to a farm near his home.... The next thing he knew, he was covered with feathers, clucking, and pecking the ground.

 

A rooster strolled past. 'So, you're the new hen, huh? How's your first day here?'

 

'Not bad,' replied Bob the hen, 'but I have this strange feeling inside. Like I'm gonna explode!'

 

'You're ovulating,' explained the rooster.

'Don't tell me you've never laid an egg before? '

 

'Never,' said Bob.

 

'Well, just relax and let it happen,' says the rooster. 'It's no big deal.'

 

Bob did, and a few uncomfortable seconds later, out popped an egg!

 

Bob was overcome with emotion as he experienced motherhood. He soon laid another egg -- his joy was overwhelming.

 

As he was about to lay his third egg, he felt a smack on the back of his head, and heard his wife yell.....

 

BOB, wake up. You just shit the bed!'

 

Hippopotamuses love water, which is why the Greeks named them the "river horse." Hippos spend up to 16 hours a day submerged in rivers and lakes to keep their massive bodies cool under the hot African sun. Hippos are graceful in water, good swimmers, and can hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes. However, they are often large enough to simply walk or stand on the lake floor, or lie in the shallows. Their eyes and nostrils are located high on their heads, which allows them to see and breathe while mostly submerged. Hippos also bask on the shoreline and secrete an oily red substance, which gave rise to the myth that they sweat blood. The liquid is actually a skin moistener and sunblock that may also provide protection against germs. At sunset, hippopotamuses leave the water and travel overland to graze. They may travel 6 miles (10 kilometers) in a night, along single-file pathways, to consume some 80 pounds (35 kilograms) of grass. Considering their enormous size, a hippo's food intake is relatively low. If threatened on land hippos may run for the water—they can match a human's speed for short distances. Hippo calves weigh nearly 100 pounds (45 kilograms) at birth and can suckle on land or underwater by closing their ears and nostrils. Each female has only one calf every two years. Soon after birth, mother and young join schools that provide some protection against crocodiles, lions, and hyenas. Hippos once had a broader distribution but now live in eastern central and southern sub-Saharan Africa, where their populations are in decline. A partially submerged hippopotamus tries to keep cool in the hot African sun. The hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος), is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae (the other is the Pygmy Hippopotamus.) After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, their closest living relatives are cetaceans (whales, porpoises, etc.) from which they diverged about 55 million years ago. The common ancestor of whales and hippos split from other even-toed ungulates around 60 million years ago. The earliest known hippopotamus fossils, belonging to the genus Kenyapotamus in Africa, date to around 16 million years ago.

The hippopotamus is semi-aquatic, inhabiting rivers, lakes and mangrove swamps, where territorial bulls preside over a stretch of river and groups of 5 to 30 females and young. During the day they remain cool by staying in the water or mud; reproduction and childbirth both occur in water. They emerge at dusk to graze on grass. While hippopotamuses rest near each other in the water, grazing is a solitary activity and hippos are not territorial on land. Hippos are recognizable by their barrel-shaped torso, enormous mouth and teeth, nearly hairless body, stubby legs and tremendous size. It is the third largest land mammal by weight (between 1½ and 3 tonnes), behind the white rhinoceros (1½ to 3½ tonnes) and the three species of elephant (3 to 9 tonnes). The hippopotamus is one of the largest quadrupeds and despite its stocky shape and short legs, it can easily outrun a human. Hippos have been clocked at 30 km/h (19 mph) over short distances. The hippopotamus is one of the most aggressive creatures in the world and is often regarded as one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. They are still threatened by habitat loss and poaching for their meat and ivory canine teeth. There is also a colony of non-zoo hippos in Colombia introduced by Pablo Escobar. The most recent theory of the origins of Hippopotamidae suggests that hippos and whales shared a common semi-aquatic ancestor that branched off from other artiodactyls around 60 million years ago.[13][15] This hypothesized ancestral group likely split into two branches around 54 million years ago.[12] One branch would evolve into cetaceans, possibly beginning about 52 million years ago with the proto-whale Pakicetus and other early whale ancestors collectively known as Archaeoceti, which eventually underwent aquatic adaptation into the completely aquatic cetaceans.[17] The other branch became the anthracotheres, a large family of four-legged beasts, the earliest of whom in the late Eocene would have resembled skinny hippopotamuses with comparatively small and narrow heads. All branches of the anthracotheres, except that which evolved into Hippopotamidae, became extinct during the Pliocene without leaving any descendants.[15]

A rough evolutionary lineage can be traced from Eocene and Oligocene species: Anthracotherium and Elomeryx to the Miocene Merycopotamus and Libycosaurus and the very latest anthracotheres in the Pliocene.[18] Merycopotamus, Libycosaurus and all hippopotamids can be considered to form a clade, with Libycosaurus being more closely related to hippos. Their common ancestor would have lived in the Miocene, about 20 million years ago. Hippopotamids are therefore deeply nested within the family Anthracotheriidae. The Hippopotamidae are believed to have evolved in Africa; the oldest known hippopotamid is the genus Kenyapotamus which lived in Africa from 16 to 8 million years ago. While hippopotamid species spread across Asia and Europe, no hippopotamuses have ever been discovered in the Americas, although various anthracothere genera emigrated into North America during the early Oligocene. From 7.5 to 1.8 million years ago an ancestor to the modern hippopotamus, Archaeopotamus, lived in Africa and the Middle East.[19]

While the fossil record of hippos is still poorly understood, the two modern genera, Hippopotamus and Choeropsis (sometimes Hexaprotodon), may have diverged as far back as 8 million years ago. Taxonomists disagree whether or not the modern Pygmy Hippopotamus is a member of Hexaprotodon —an apparently paraphyletic genus also embracing many extinct Asian hippopotamuses that is more closely related to Hippopotamus, or Choeropsis —an older and basal genus.[18][19]

[edit]Extinct species

Three species of Malagasy Hippopotamus became extinct during the Holocene on Madagascar, one of them within the past 1,000 years. The Malagasy Hippos were smaller than the modern hippopotamus, likely through the process of insular dwarfism.[20] There is fossil evidence that many Malagasy Hippos were hunted by humans, a likely factor in their eventual extinction.[20] Isolated members of Malagasy Hippopotamus may have survived in remote pockets; in 1976, villagers described a living animal called the Kilopilopitsofy, which may have been a Malagasy Hippopotamus.[21]

Two species of Hippopotamus, the European Hippopotamus (H. antiquus) and H. gorgops ranged throughout continental Europe and the British Isles. Both species became extinct before the last glaciation. Ancestors of European Hippos found their way to many islands of the Mediterranean during the Pleistocene.[22] Both species were larger than the modern hippopotamus, averaging about 1 meter (3.3 feet) longer. The Pleistocene also saw a number of dwarf species evolve on several Mediterranean islands including Crete (H. creutzburgi), Cyprus (H. minor), Malta (H. melitensis) and Sicily (H. pentlandi). Of these, the Cyprus Dwarf Hippopotamus, survived until the end of the Pleistocene or early Holocene. Evidence from an archaeological site Aetokremnos, continues to cause debate on whether or not the species was encountered, and was driven to extinction, by man. Hippopotamuses are among the largest living mammals; only elephants and some rhinoceroses and whales are heavier. They can live in the water or on land. Their specific gravity allows them to sink and walk or run along the bottom of a river. Hippos are considered megafauna, but unlike all other African megafauna, hippos have adapted for a semi-aquatic life in freshwater lakes and rivers.[9]:3 A hippo's lifespan is typically 40–50 years.[6]:277 Donna the Hippo, 60, was the oldest living hippo in captivity. She lived at the Mesker Park Zoo in Evansville, Indiana, USA[24][25] until her death on August 1, 2012. The oldest hippo ever recorded was called Tanga; she lived in Munich, Germany, and died in 1995 at the age of 61.[26]

Because of their enormous size, hippopotamuses are difficult to weigh in the wild. Most estimates of the weight come from culling operations that were carried out in the 1960s. The average weights for adult males ranged between 1,500–1,800 kg (3,300–4,000 lb). Females are smaller than their male counterparts, with average weights measuring between 1,300–1,500 kg (2,900–3,300 lb).[9]:12 Older males can get much larger, reaching at least 3,200 kg (7,100 lb) with a few exceptional specimens exceeding 3,600 kg (7,900 lb).[27][28] The heaviest known hippopotamus weighed approximately 4,500 kg (9,900 lb).[29] Male hippos appear to continue growing throughout their lives; females reach a maximum weight at around age 25.[30]

Hippos measure 3.3 to 5.2 meters (11 to 17 ft) long, including a tail of about 56 centimeters (22 in) in length and average about 1.5 meters (5 ft) tall at the shoulder.[31][32] The range of hippopotamus sizes overlaps with the range of the white rhinoceros; use of different metrics makes it unclear which is the largest land animal after elephants. Even though they are bulky animals, hippopotamuses can run faster than a human on land. Estimates of their running speed vary from 30 km/h (18 mph) to 40 km/h (25 mph), or even 50 km/h (30 mph). The hippo can maintain these higher speeds for only a few hundred meters. Despite being semi-aquatic and having webbed feet, an adult hippo is not a particularly good swimmer nor can it float. It is rarely found in deep water; when it is, the animal moves by porpoise-like leaps from the bottom. The eyes, ears, and nostrils of hippos are placed high on the roof of the skull. This allows them to be in the water with most of their body submerged in the waters and mud of tropical rivers to stay cool and prevent sunburn. Their skeletal structure is graviportal, adapted to carrying the animals' enormous weight. Hippopotamuses have small legs (relative to other megafauna) because the water in which they live reduces the weight burden. Unlike most other semi-aquatic animals, the hippopotamus has very little hair.[6]:260 The skin is 6 in (15 cm) thick,[33] providing it great protection against conspecifics and predators. The animals's upper parts are purplish-gray to blue-black while the under parts and areas around the eyes and ears can be brownish-pink.[6]:260 The testes of the males descend only partially and a scrotum is not present. In addition, the penis retracts into the body when not erect. The genitals of the female are unusual in that the vagina is ridged and two large diverticula protrude from the vulval vestibule. The function of these is unknown.[9]:28–29

The hippo's jaw is powered by a large masseter and a well developed digastric; the latter loops up behind the former to the hyoid.[6]:259 The jaw hinge is located far back enough to allow the animal to open its mouth at almost 180°.[9]:17 On the National Geographic Channel television program, "Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr", Dr. Brady Barr measured the bite force of an adult female hippo at 8100 N (1821 lbf); Barr also attempted to measure the bite pressure of an adult male hippo, but had to abandon the attempt due to the male's aggressiveness.[34] Hippopotamus teeth sharpen themselves as they grind together. The lower canines and lower incisors are enlarged, especially in males, and grow continuously. The incisors can reach 40 cm (16 in) while the canines reach up to 50 cm (20 in).[33]

Their skin secretes a natural sunscreen substance which is red-colored. The secretion is sometimes referred to as "blood sweat," but is neither blood nor sweat. This secretion is initially colorless and turns red-orange within minutes, eventually becoming brown. Two distinct pigments have been identified in the secretions, one red (hipposudoric acid) and one orange (norhipposudoric acid). The two pigments are highly acidic compounds. Both pigments inhibit the growth of disease-causing bacteria; as well, the light absorption of both pigments peaks in the ultraviolet range, creating a sunscreen effect. All hippos, even those with different diets, secrete the pigments, so it does not appear that food is the source of the pigments. Instead, the animals may synthesize the pigments from precursors such as the amino acid tyrosine. Hippopotamus amphibius was widespread in North Africa and Europe during the Eemian[36] and late Pleistocene until about 30,000 years ago. The species was common in Egypt's Nile region during antiquity but has since been extirpated. Pliny the Elder writes that, in his time, the best location in Egypt for capturing this animal was in the Saite nome;[37] the animal could still be found along the Damietta branch after the Arab Conquest in 639. Hippos are still found in the rivers and lakes of the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, north through to Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, west from Ghana to Gambia, and also in Southern Africa (Botswana, Republic of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique). Genetic evidence suggests that common hippos in Africa experienced a marked population expansion during or after the Pleistocene Epoch, attributed to an increase in water bodies at the end of the era. These findings have important conservation implications as hippo populations across the continent are currently threatened by loss of access to fresh water.[10] Hippos are also subject to unregulated hunting and poaching. In May 2006 the hippopotamus was identified as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List drawn up by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), with an estimated population of between 125,000 and 150,000 hippos, a decline of between 7% and 20% since the IUCN's 1996 study. Zambia (40,000) and Tanzania (20,000–30,000) possess the largest populations.[1]

The hippo population declined most dramatically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[38] The population in Virunga National Park had dropped to 800 or 900 from around 29,000 in the mid 1970s.[39] The decline is attributed to the disruptions caused by the Second Congo War.[39] The poachers are believed to be former Hutu rebels, poorly paid Congolese soldiers, and local militia groups.[39] Reasons for poaching include the belief that hippos are harmful to society, and also for money.[40] The sale of hippo meat is illegal, but black-market sales are difficult for Virunga National Park officers to track. Invasive potential

In the late 1980s, Pablo Escobar kept four hippos in a private menagerie at his residence in Hacienda Napoles, 100 km east of Medellín, Colombia, after buying them in New Orleans. They were deemed too difficult to seize and move after Escobar's fall, and hence left on the untended estate. By 2007, the animals had multiplied to 16 and had taken to roaming the area for food in the nearby Magdalena River.[41] In 2009, two adults and one calf escaped the herd, and after attacking humans and killing cattle, one of the adults (called "Pepe") was killed by hunters under authorization of the local authorities.[42][43] It is unknown what kind of effects the presence of hippos might have on the ecosystem in Colombia. According to experts interviewed by W Radio Colombia, the animals could survive in the Colombian jungles. It is believed that the lack of control from the Colombian government, which is not used to dealing with this species, could result in human fatalities. Hippos spend most of their days wallowing in the water or the mud, with the other members of their pod. The water serves to keep their body temperature down, and to keep their skin from drying out. With the exception of eating, most of hippopotamuses' lives —from childbirth, fighting with other hippos, to reproduction— occur in the water. Hippos leave the water at dusk and travel inland, sometimes up to 8 kilometers (5 mi), to graze on short grass, their main source of food. They spend four to five hours grazing and can consume 68 kilograms (150 lb) of grass each night.[44] Like almost any herbivore, they will consume many other plants if presented with them, but their diet in nature consists almost entirely of grass, with only minimal consumption of aquatic plants.[45] Hippos have (rarely) been filmed eating carrion, usually close to the water. There are other reports of meat-eating, and even cannibalism and predation.[46] The stomach anatomy of a hippo is not suited to carnivory, and meat-eating is likely caused by aberrant behavior or nutritional stress.[9]:84

The diet of hippos consists mostly of terrestrial grasses, even though they spend most of their time in the water. Most of their defecation occurs in the water, creating allochthonous deposits of organic matter along the river beds. These deposits have an unclear ecological function.[45] Because of their size and their habit of taking the same paths to feed, hippos can have a significant impact on the land they walk across, both by keeping the land clear of vegetation and depressing the ground. Over prolonged periods hippos can divert the paths of swamps and channels.[47]

Adult hippos move at speeds up to 8 km/h (5 mph) in water. Adult hippos typically resurface to breathe every three to five minutes. The young have to breathe every two to three minutes.[9]:4 The process of surfacing and breathing is automatic, and even a hippo sleeping underwater will rise and breathe without waking. A hippo closes its nostrils when it submerges into the water. As with fish and turtles on a coral reef, hippo occasionally visit cleaning stations and signal by wide-open mouth their readiness for being cleaned of parasites by certain species of fish. This situation is an example of mutualism in which the hippo benefits from the cleansing while the fish receive food.[ Studying the interaction of male and female hippopotamuses has long been complicated by the fact that hippos are not sexually dimorphic and thus females and young males are almost indistinguishable in the field.[49] Although hippos like to lie close to each other, they do not seem to form social bonds except between mothers and daughters, and are not social animals. The reason they huddle close together is unknown.[9]:49

Hippopotamuses are territorial only in water, where a bull presides over a small stretch of river, on average 250 meters in length, and containing ten females. The largest pods can contain over 100 hippos.[9]:50 Other bachelors are allowed in a bull's stretch, as long as they behave submissively toward the bull. The territories of hippos exist to establish mating rights. Within the pods, the hippos tend to segregate by gender. Bachelors will lounge near other bachelors, females with other females, and the bull on his own. When hippos emerge from the water to graze, they do so individually.[9]:4

Hippopotamuses appear to communicate verbally, through grunts and bellows, and it is thought that they may practice echolocation, but the purpose of these vocalizations is currently unknown. Hippos have the unique ability to hold their head partially above the water and send out a cry that travels through both water and air; hippos above and under water will respond.[ Female hippos reach sexual maturity at five to six years of age and have a gestation period of 8 months. A study of endocrine systems revealed that female hippopotamuses may begin puberty as early as 3 or 4 years of age.[51] Males reach maturity at around 7.5 years. A study of hippopotamus reproductive behavior in Uganda showed that peak conceptions occurred during the end of the wet season in the summer, and peak births occurred toward the beginning of the wet season in late winter. This is because of the female's estrous cycle; as with most large mammals, male hippopotamus spermatozoa is active year round. Studies of hippos in Zambia and South Africa also showed evidence of births occurring at the start of the wet season.[9]:60–61 After becoming pregnant, a female hippopotamus will typically not begin ovulation again for 17 months.[51]

Mating occurs in the water with the female submerged for most of the encounter,[9]:63 her head emerging periodically to draw breath. Baby hippos are born underwater at a weight between 25 and 45 kg (60–110 lb) and an average length of around 127 cm (50 in) and must swim to the surface to take their first breath. A mother typically gives birth to only one hippo, although twins also occur. The young often rest on their mothers' backs when in water that is too deep for them, and they swim underwater to suckle. They also will suckle on land when the mother leaves the water. Weaning starts between six and eight months after birth and most calves are fully weaned after a year.[9]:64 Like many other large mammals, hippos are described as K-strategists, in this case typically producing just one large, well-developed infant every couple of years (rather than large numbers of small, poorly developed young several times per year as is common among small mammals such as rodents. Hippopotamuses are by nature very aggressive animals, especially when young calves are present. Frequent targets of their aggression include crocodiles, which often inhabit the same river habitat as hippos. Nile crocodiles, lions and spotted hyenas are known to prey on young hippos.[53] Hippos are very aggressive towards humans, whom they commonly attack whether in boats or on land with no apparent provocation.[54] They are widely considered to be one of the most dangerous large animals in Africa.[55][56]

To mark territory, hippos spin their tails while defecating to distribute their excrement over a greater area.[57] Likely for the same reason, hippos are retromingent – that is, they urinate backwards.[58] When in combat, male hippos use their incisors to block each others attacks, and their lower canines to inflict damage.[6]:260 Hippos rarely kill each other, even in territorial challenges. Usually a territorial bull and a challenging bachelor will stop fighting when it is clear that one hippo is stronger. When hippos become overpopulated, or when a habitat starts to shrink, bulls will sometimes attempt to kill infants, but this behavior is not common under normal conditions.[52] Some incidents of hippo cannibalism have been documented, but it is believed to be the behavior of distressed or sick hippos, and not healthy behavior. The earliest evidence of human interaction with hippos comes from butchery cut marks upon hippo bones at Bouri Formation dated around 160,000 years ago.[59] Later rock paintings and engravings showing hippos being hunted have been found in the mountains of the central Sahara dated 4,000–5,000 years ago near Djanet in the Tassili n'Ajjer Mountains.[9]:1 The ancient Egyptians recognized the hippo as a ferocious denizen of the Nile.

The hippopotamus was also known to the Greeks and Romans. The Greek historian Herodotus described the hippopotamus in The Histories (written circa 440 BC) and the Roman Historian Pliny the Elder wrote about the hippopotamus in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia (written circa 77 AD).[37][60] Hippopotamus was one of the many exotic animals brought to fight gladiators in Rome by the emperor Philip I the Arab to commemorate Rome's 1000 years anniversary in 248 AD. Silver coins with hippo's image were minted that year.[citation needed]

Zulu warriors preferred to be as brave as a hippopotamus, since even lions were not considered as brave. "In 1888, Captain Baden-Powell was part of a column searching for the Zulu chief Dinizulu, who was leading the Usutu people in revolt against the British colonists. The column was joined by John Dunn, a white Zulu chief, who led an impi (army) of 2000 Zulu warriors to join the British." [61]

The words of the Zulu anthem sounded like this:

"Een-gonyama Gonyama! "Invooboo! Yah-bo! Yah-bo! Invooboo!"

"John Dunn was at the head of his impi. [Baden Powell] asked him to translate the Zulu anthem his men had been singing. Dunn laughed and replied: "He is a lion. Yes, he is better than a lion—he is a hippopotamus. Hippopotamuses have long been popular zoo animals. The first zoo hippo in modern history was Obaysch who arrived at the London Zoo on May 25, 1850, where he attracted up to 10,000 visitors a day and inspired a popular song, the Hippopotamus Polka.[63] Hippos have remained popular zoo animals since Obaysch, and generally breed well in captivity. Their birth rates are lower than in the wild, but this is attributed to zoos' not wanting to breed as many hippos as possible, since hippos are large and relatively expensive animals to maintain.[9]:129[63]

Like many zoo animals, hippos were traditionally displayed in concrete exhibits. In the case of hippos, they usually had a pool of water and patch of grass. In the 1980s, zoo designers increasingly designed exhibits that reflected the animals' native habitats. The best known of these, the Toledo Zoo Hippoquarium, features a 360,000 gallon pool for hippos.[64] In 1987, researchers were able to tape, for the first time, an underwater birth (as in the wild) at the Toledo Zoo. The exhibit was so popular that the hippos became the logo of the Toledo Zoo. A red hippo represented the Ancient Egyptian god Set; the thigh is the 'phallic leg of set' symbolic of virility. Set's consort Tawaret was also seen as part hippo.[66] The hippopotamus-headed Tawaret was a goddess of protection in pregnancy and childbirth, because ancient Egyptians recognized the protective nature of a female hippopotamus toward her young.[67] The Ijo people wore masks of aquatic animals like the hippo when practicing their water spirit cults.[68] The Behemoth from the Book of Job, 40:15–24 is also thought to be based on a hippo.[69]

Hippos have been the subjects of various African folktales. According to a Bushmen story; when the Creator assigned each animal their place in nature, the hippos wanted to live in the water, but were refused out of fear that they might eat all the fish. After begging and pleading, the hippos were finally allowed to live in the water on the conditions that they would eat grass instead of fish and would fling their dung so that it can be inspected for fish bones.[70] In a Ndebele tale, the hippo originally had long, beautiful hair but was set on fire by a jealous hare and had to jump into a nearby pool. The hippo lost most of his hair and was too embarrassed to leave the water.[70]

Ever since Obaysch inspired the Hippopotamus Polka, hippos have been popular animals in Western culture for their rotund appearance that many consider comical.[63] Stories of hippos like Huberta who became a celebrity in South Africa in the 1930s for trekking across the country;[71] or the tale of Owen and Mzee, a hippo and tortoise who developed an intimate bond; have amused people who have bought hippo books, merchandise, and many a stuffed hippo toy.[72][73] Hippos were mentioned in the novelty Christmas song "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" that became a hit for child star Gayla Peevey in 1953.[74] They also feature in the songs "The Hippopotamus" and "Hippo Encore" by Flanders and Swann, with the famous refrain Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud. They even inspired a popular board game, Hungry Hungry Hippos. Hippos have also been popular cartoon characters, where their rotund frame is used for humorous effect. The Disney film Fantasia featured a ballerina hippopotamus dancing to the opera, La Gioconda.[38] Other cartoon hippos have included Hanna-Barbera's Peter Potamus, the book and TV series George and Martha, Flavio and Marita on the Animaniacs, Pat of the French duo Pat et Stanley, The Backyardigan's Tasha, and Gloria and Moto-Moto from the Madagascar franchise. A Sesame Street cartoon from the early 1970s features a hippo who lives in the country and likes it quiet, while being disturbed when the mouse who likes it loud moves in with her.[citation needed]

The hippopotamus characters "Happy Hippos" were created in 1988 by the French designer Andre Roche [77] based in Munich, to be hidden in the "Kinder Surprise egg" of the Italian chocolate company Ferrero SpA. These characters were not placid like real hippos[contradiction] but rather cute and lively, and had such a success that they reappeared several times in different products of this company in the following years, increasing their popularity worldwide each time.[citation needed] The Nintendo Company published in the years 2001 and 2007 Game Boy adventures of them. In the game of chess, the hippopotamus lends its name to the Hippopotamus Defense, an opening system, which is generally considered weak.The River Horse is a popular outdoor sculpture at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Botswana, Moremi National Park, Moremi Game reserve, private Reserve, Farm, chobe National park, Chobe Game Reserve, Zambia, Zambezi River, Livingstone, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, Wildlife Conservation Project, Maramba River Lodge, South Africa, Krugger National Park. art beach blue bw california canada canon china city concert de england europe family festival film flower flowers food france friends green instagramapp iphoneography italy japan live london music nature new newyork night nikon nyc paris park party people photography portrait red sky snow square squareformat street summer sunset travel trip uk usa vacation water wedding white winter

The alpaca (Lama pacos) is a species of South American camelid mammal. It is similar to, and often confused with, the llama. However, alpacas are often noticeably smaller than llamas. The two animals are closely related and can successfully crossbreed. Both species are believed to have been domesticated from their wild relatives, the vicuña and guanaco. There are two breeds of alpaca: the Suri alpaca and the Huacaya alpaca.

 

Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of Southern Peru, Western Bolivia, Ecuador, and Northern Chile at an altitude of 3,500 to 5,000 metres (11,000 to 16,000 feet) above sea level. Alpacas are considerably smaller than llamas, and unlike llamas, they were not bred to be working animals, but were bred specifically for their fiber. Alpaca fiber is used for making knitted and woven items, similar to sheep's wool. These items include blankets, sweaters, hats, gloves, scarves, a wide variety of textiles, and ponchos, in South America, as well as sweaters, socks, coats, and bedding in other parts of the world. The fiber comes in more than 52 natural colors as classified in Peru, 12 as classified in Australia, and 16 as classified in the United States.

 

Alpacas communicate through body language. The most common is spitting to show dominance when they are in distress, fearful, or feel agitated. Male alpacas are more aggressive than females, and tend to establish dominance within their herd group. In some cases, alpha males will immobilize the head and neck of a weaker or challenging male in order to show their strength and dominance.

 

In the textile industry, "alpaca" primarily refers to the hair of Peruvian alpacas, but more broadly it refers to a style of fabric originally made from alpaca hair, such as mohair, Icelandic sheep wool, or even high-quality wool from other breeds of sheep. In trade, distinctions are made between alpacas and the several styles of mohair and luster.

 

An adult alpaca generally is between 81 and 99 centimetres (32 and 39 inches) in height at the shoulders (withers). They usually weigh between 48 and 90 kilograms (106 and 198 pounds). Raised in the same conditions, the difference in weight can be small with males weighting around 22.3 kilograms (49 lb 3 oz) and females 21.3 kilograms (46 lb 15 oz).

 

Background

 

The relationship between alpacas and vicuñas was disputed for many years. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the four South American lamoid species were assigned scientific names. At that time, the alpaca was assumed to be descended from the llama, ignoring similarities in size, fleece and dentition between the alpaca and the vicuña. Classification was complicated by the fact that all four species of South American camelid can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. The advent of DNA technology made a more accurate classification possible.

 

In 2001, the alpaca genus classification changed from Lama pacos to Vicugna pacos, following the presentation of a paper on work by Miranda Kadwell et al. on alpaca DNA to the Royal Society showing the alpaca is descended from the vicuña, not the guanaco.

 

Origin and domestication

Alpacas were domesticated thousands of years ago. The Moche people of Northern Peru often used alpaca images in their art. There are no known wild alpacas, and its closest living relative, the vicuña (also native to South America), is the wild ancestor of the alpaca.

 

The family Camelidae first appeared in Americas 40–45 million years ago, during the Eocene period, from the common ancestor, Protylopus. The descendants divided into Camelini and Lamini tribes, taking different migratory patterns to Asia and South America, respectively. Although the camelids became extinct in North America around 3 million years ago, it flourished in the South with the species we see today. It was not until 2–5 million years ago, during the Pliocene, that the genus Hemiauchenia of the tribe Lamini split into Palaeolama and Lama; the latter would then split again into Lama and Vicugna upon migrating down to South America.

 

Remains of vicuña and guanaco dating around 12,000 years have been found throughout Peru. Their domesticated counterparts, the llama and alpaca, have been found mummified in the Moquegua valley, in the south of Peru, dating back 900 to 1000 years. Mummies found in this region show two breeds of alpacas. More precise analysis of bone and teeth of these mummies has demonstrated that alpacas were domesticated from the Vicugna vicugna. Other research, considering the behavioral and morphological characteristics of alpacas and their wild counterparts, seems to indicate that alpacas could find their origins in Lama guanicoe as well as Vicugna vicugna, or even a hybrid of both.

 

Genetic analysis shows a different picture of the origins of the alpaca. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA shows that most alpacas have guanaco mtDNA, and many also have vicuña mtDNA. But microsatellite data shows that alpaca DNA is much more similar to vicuña DNA than to guanaco DNA. This suggests that alpacas are descendants of the Vicugna vicugna, not of the Lama guanicoe. The discrepancy with mtDNA seems to be a result of the fact that mtDNA is only transmitted by the mother, and recent husbandry practices have caused hybridization between llamas (which primarily carry guanaco DNA) and alpacas. To the extent that many of today's domestic alpacas are the result of male alpacas bred to female llamas, this would explain the mtDNA consistent with guanacos. This situation has led to attempts to reclassify the alpaca as Vicugna pacos.

 

Breeds

The alpaca comes in two breeds, Suri and Huacaya, based on their fibers rather than scientific or European classifications.

(Museum of Osteology)

Huacaya alpacas are the most commonly found, constituting about 90% of the population. The Huacaya alpaca is thought to have originated in post-colonial Peru. This is due to their thicker fleece which makes them more suited to survive in the higher altitudes of the Andes after being pushed into the highlands of Peru with the arrival of the Spanish.

 

Suri alpacas represent a smaller portion of the total alpaca population, around 10%. They are thought to have been more prevalent in pre-Columbian Peru since they could be kept at a lower altitude where a thicker fleece was not needed for harsh weather conditions.

 

Behavior

 

Alpacas are social herd animals that live in family groups, consisting of a territorial alpha male, females, and their young ones. Alpacas warn the herd about intruders by making sharp, noisy inhalations that sound like a high-pitched bray. The herd may attack smaller predators with their front feet and can spit and kick. Their aggression towards members of the canid family (coyotes, foxes, dogs etc.) is exploited when alpacas are used as guard llamas for guarding sheep.

 

Alpacas can sometimes be aggressive, but they can also be very gentle, intelligent, and extremely observant. For the most part, alpacas are very quiet, but male alpacas are more energetic when they get involved in fighting with other alpacas. When they prey, they are cautious but also nervous when they feel any type of threat. They can feel threatened when a person or another alpaca comes up from behind them.

 

Alpacas set their own boundaries of "personal space" within their families and groups.They make a hierarchy in some sense, and each alpaca is aware of the dominant animals in each group. Body language is the key to their communication. It helps to maintain their order. One example of their body communication includes a pose named broadside, where their ears are pulled back and they stand sideways. This pose is used when male alpacas are defending their territory.

 

When they are young, they tend to follow larger objects and to sit near or under them. An example of this is a baby alpaca with its mother. This can also apply when an alpaca passes by an older alpaca.

 

Training

Alpacas are generally very trainable and usually respond to reward, most commonly in the form of food. They can usually be petted without getting agitated, especially if one avoids petting the head or neck. Alpacas are usually quite easy to herd, even in large groups. However, during herding, it is recommended for the handler to approach the animals slowly and quietly, as failing to do so can result in danger for both the animals and the handler.

 

Alpacas and llamas have started showing up in U.S. nursing homes and hospitals as trained, certified therapy animals. The Mayo Clinic says animal-assisted therapy can reduce pain, depression, anxiety, and fatigue. This type of animal therapy is growing in popularity, and there are several organizations throughout the United States that participate.

 

Spitting

Not all alpacas spit, but all are capable of doing so. "Spit" is somewhat euphemistic; occasionally the projectile contains only air and a little saliva, although alpacas commonly bring up acidic stomach contents (generally a green, grassy mix) and project it onto their chosen targets. Spitting is mostly reserved for other alpacas, but an alpaca will also occasionally spit at a human.

 

Spitting can result in what is called "sour mouth". Sour mouth is characterized by "a loose-hanging lower lip and a gaping mouth."

 

Alpacas can spit for several reasons. A female alpaca spits when she is not interested in a male alpaca, typically when she thinks that she is already impregnated. Both sexes of alpaca keep others away from their food, or anything they have their eyes on. Most give a slight warning before spitting by blowing air out and raising their heads, giving their ears a "pinned" appearance.

 

Alpacas can spit up to ten feet if they need to. For example, if another animal does not back off, the alpaca will throw up its stomach contents, resulting in a lot of spit.

 

Some signs of stress which can lead to their spitting habits include: humming, a wrinkle under their eye, drooling, rapid breathing, and stomping their feet. When alpacas show any sign of interest or alertness, they tend to sniff their surroundings, watch closely, or stand quietly in place and stare.

 

When it comes to reproduction, they spit because it is a response triggered by the progesterone levels being increased, which is associated with ovulation.

 

Hygiene

Alpacas use a communal dung pile, where they do not graze. This behaviour tends to limit the spread of internal parasites. Generally, males have much tidier, and fewer dung piles than females, which tend to stand in a line and all go at once. One female approaches the dung pile and begins to urinate and/or defecate, and the rest of the herd often follows. Alpaca waste is collected and used as garden fertilizer or even natural fertilizer.

 

Because of their preference for using a dung pile for excreting bodily waste, some alpacas have been successfully house-trained.

 

Alpacas develop dental hygiene problems which affect their eating and behavior. Warning signs include protracted chewing while eating, or food spilling out of their mouths. Poor body condition and sunken cheeks are also telltales of dental problems.

 

Alpacas make a variety of sounds:

 

Humming: When alpacas are born, the mother and baby hum constantly. They also hum as a sign of distress, especially when they are separated from their herd. Alpacas may also hum when curious, happy, worried or cautious.

Snorting: Alpacas snort when another alpaca is invading its space.

Grumbling: Alpacas grumble to warn each other. For example, when one is invading another's personal space, it sounds like gurgling.

Clucking: Similar to a hen's cluck, alpacas cluck when a mother is concerned for her cria. Male alpacas cluck to signal friendly behavior.

Screaming: Their screams are extremely deafening and loud. They will scream when they are not handled correctly or when they are being attacked by a potential enemy.

Screeching: A bird-like cry, presumably intended to terrify the opponent. This sound is typically used by male alpacas when they are in a fight over dominance. When a female screeches, it is more of a growl when she is angry.

 

Reproduction

Females are induced ovulators; meaning the act of mating and the presence of semen causes them to ovulate. Females usually conceive after just one breeding, but occasionally do have trouble conceiving. Artificial insemination is technically difficult, expensive and not common, but it can be accomplished. Embryo transfer is more widespread.

 

A male is usually ready to mate for the first time between two and three years of age. It is not advisable to allow a young female to be bred until she is mature and has reached two-thirds of her mature weight. Over-breeding a young female before conception is possibly a common cause of uterine infections. As the age of maturation varies greatly between individuals, it is usually recommended that novice breeders wait until females are 18 months of age or older before initiating breeding.

 

Alpacas can breed at any time throughout the year but it is more difficult to breed in the winter. Most breed during autumn or late spring. The most popular way to have alpacas mate is pen mating. Pen mating is when they move both the female and the desired male into a pen. Another way is paddock mating where one male alpaca is let loose in the paddock with several female alpacas.

 

The gestation period is, on average, 11.5 months, and usually results in a single offspring, or cria. Twins are rare, occurring about once per 1000 deliveries. Cria are generally between 15 and 19 pounds, and are standing 30 to 90 minutes after birth. After a female gives birth, she is generally receptive to breeding again after about two weeks. Crias may be weaned through human intervention at about six months old and 60 pounds, but many breeders prefer to allow the female to decide when to wean her offspring; they can be weaned earlier or later depending on their size and emotional maturity.

 

The average lifespan of an alpaca is between 15 and 20 years, and the longest-lived alpaca on record is 27 years.

  

Pests and diseases

Cattle tuberculosis can also infect alpacas: Mycobacterium bovis also causes TB in this species worldwide. Krajewska‐Wędzina et al., 2020 detect M. bovis in individuals traded from the United Kingdom to Poland. To accomplish this they develop a seroassay which correctly identifies positive subjects which are false negative for a common skin test. Krajewska‐Wędzina et al. also find that alpacas are unusual in mounting a competent early-infection immune response. Bernitz et al., 2021 believe this to generalise to all camelids.

 

Habitat and lifestyle

Alpacas can be found throughout most of South America. They typically live in temperate conditions in the mountains with high altitudes.

 

They are easy to care for since they are not limited to a specific type of environment. Animals such as flamingos, condors, spectacled bears, mountain lions, coyotes, llamas, and sheep live near alpacas when they are in their natural habitat.

 

Population

Alpacas are native to Peru, but can be found throughout the globe in captivity. Peru currently has the largest alpaca population, with over half the world's animals. The population declined drastically after the Spanish Conquistadors invaded the Andes mountains in 1532, after which 98% of the animals were destroyed. The Spanish also brought with them diseases that were fatal to alpacas.

 

European conquest forced the animals to move higher into the mountains, which remained there permanently. Although alpacas had almost been wiped out completely, they were rediscovered sometime during the 19th century by Europeans. After finding uses for them, the animals became important to societies during the industrial revolution.

 

In popular culture

Nuzzle and Scratch was a British children's television programme featuring two fictional alpacas that was first broadcast between 2008 and 2011.

 

Interest in alpacas grew as a result of Depp v. Heard, the 2022 trial in which Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation in Virginia after Heard wrote an op-ed saying she was a public victim of domestic violence. Depp testified, under oath, that he would not make another Pirates of the Caribbean film for "300 million dollars and a million alpacas".

 

Diet

 

Alpacas chew their food which ends up being mixed with their cud and saliva and then they swallow it. Alpacas usually eat 1.5% of their body weight daily for normal growth. They mainly need pasture grass, hay, or silage but some may also need supplemental energy and protein foods and they will also normally try to chew on almost anything (e.g. empty bottle). Most alpaca ranchers rotate their feeding grounds so the grass can regrow and fecal parasites may die before reusing the area. Pasture grass is a great source of protein. When seasons change, the grass loses or gains more protein. For example, in the spring, the pasture grass has about 20% protein while in the summer, it only has 6%. They need more energy supplements in the winter to produce body heat and warmth. They get their fiber from hay or from long stems which provides them with vitamin E. Green grass contains vitamin A and E.

 

Alpacas can eat natural unfertilized grass; however, ranchers can also supplement grass with low-protein grass hay. To provide selenium and other necessary vitamins, ranchers will feed their domestic alpacas a daily dose of grain to provide additional nutrients that are not fully obtained from their primary diet. Alpacas may obtain the necessary vitamins in their native grazing ranges.

 

Digestion

Alpacas, like other camelids, have a three-chambered stomach; combined with chewing cud, this three-chambered system allows maximum extraction of nutrients from low-quality forages. Alpacas are not ruminants, pseudo-ruminants, or modified ruminants, as there are many differences between the anatomy and physiology of a camelid and a ruminant stomach.

 

Alpacas will chew their food in a figure eight motion, swallow the food, and then pass it into one of the stomach's chambers. The first and second chambers (called C1 and C2) are anaerobic fermentation chambers where the fermentation process begins. The alpaca will further absorb nutrients and water in the first part of the third chamber. The end of the third chamber (called C3) is where the stomach secretes acids to digest food and is the likely place where an alpaca will have ulcers if stressed.

 

Poisonous plants

Many plants are poisonous to the alpaca, including the bracken fern, Madagascar ragwort, oleander, and some azaleas. In common with similar livestock, others include acorns, African rue, agave, amaryllis, autumn crocus, bear grass, broom snakeweed, buckwheat, ragweed, buttercups, calla lily, orange tree foliage, carnations, castor beans, and many others.

 

Fiber

Main article: Alpaca fiber

Alpacas are typically sheared once per year in the spring. Each shearing produces approximately 2.3 to 4.5 kilograms (5 to 10 pounds) of fiber per alpaca. An adult alpaca might produce 1.4 to 2.6 kilograms (50 to 90 ounces) of first-quality fiber as well as 1.4 to 2.8 kilograms (50 to 100 ounces) of second- and third-quality fiber. The quality of alpaca fiber is determined by how crimpy it is. Typically, the greater the number of small folds in the fiber, the greater the quality.

 

Prices

Alpacas were the subject of a speculative bubble between their introduction to North America in 1984 and the early 21st century. The price for American alpacas ranged from US$50 for a castrated male (gelding) to US$675,000 for the highest in the world, depending on breeding history, sex, and color. In 2006, researchers warned that the higher prices sought for alpaca breeding stock were largely speculative and not supported by market fundamentals, given the low inherent returns per head from the main end product, alpaca fiber, and prices into the $100s per head rather than $10,000s would be required for a commercially viable fiber production herd.

 

Marketed as "the investment you can hug" in television commercials by the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association, the market for alpacas was almost entirely dependent on breeding and selling animals to new buyers, a classic sign of speculative bubbles in livestock. The bubble burst in 2007, with the price of alpaca breeding stock dropping by thousands of dollars each year thereafter. Many farmers found themselves unable to sell animals for any price, or even give them away.

 

It is possible to raise up to 25 alpacas per hectare (10/acre), as they have a designated area for waste products and keep their eating area away from their waste area. However, this ratio differs from country to country and is highly dependent on the quality of pasture available (in many desert locations it is generally only possible to run one to three animals per acre due to lack of suitable vegetation). Fiber quality is the primary variant in the price achieved for alpaca wool; in Australia, it is common to classify the fiber by the thickness of the individual hairs and by the amount of vegetable matter contained in the supplied shearings.

 

Livestock

 

Alpacas need to eat 1–2% of their body weight per day, so about two 27 kg (60 lb) bales of grass hay per month per animal. When formulating a proper diet for alpacas, water and hay analysis should be performed to determine the proper vitamin and mineral supplementation program. Two options are to provide free choice salt/mineral powder or feed a specially formulated ration. Indigenous to the highest regions of the Andes, this harsh environment has created an extremely hardy animal, so only minimal housing and predator fencing are needed. The alpacas' three-chambered stomachs allow for extremely efficient digestion. There are no viable seeds in the manure, because alpacas prefer to only eat tender plant leaves, and will not consume thick plant stems; therefore, alpaca manure does not need composting to enrich pastures or ornamental landscaping. Nail and teeth trimming are needed every six to twelve months, along with annual shearing.

 

Similar to ruminants, such as cattle and sheep, alpacas have only lower teeth at the front of their mouths; therefore, they do not pull the grass up by the roots. Rotating pastures is still important, though, as alpacas have a tendency to regraze an area repeatedly. Alpacas are fiber-producing animals; they do not need to be slaughtered to reap their product, and their fiber is a renewable resource that grows yearly.

 

Cultural presence

 

Alpacas are closely tied to cultural practices for Andeans people. Prior to colonization, the image of the alpaca was used in rituals and in their religious practices. Since the people in the region depended heavily on these animals for their sustenance, the alpaca was seen as a gift from Pachamama. Alpacas were used for their meat, fibers for clothing, and art, and their images in the form of conopas.

 

Conopas take their appearance from the Suri alpacas, with long locks flanking their sides and bangs covering the eyes, and a depression on the back. This depression is used in ritual practices, usually filled with coca leaves and fat from alpacas and lamas, to bring fertility and luck. While their use was prevalent before colonization, the attempts to convert the Andean people to Catholicism led to the acquisition of more than 3,400 conopas in Lima alone.

 

The origin of alpacas is depicted in legend; the legend states they came to be in the world after a goddess fell in love with a man. The goddess' father only allowed her to be with her lover if he cared for her herd of alpacas. On top of caring for the herd, he was to always carry a small animal for his entire life. As the goddess came into our world, the alpacas followed her. Everything was fine until the man set the small animal down, and the goddess fled back to her home. On her way back home, the man attempted to stop her and her herd from fleeing. While he was not able to stop her from returning, he was able to stop a few alpacas from returning. These alpacas who did not make it back are said to be seen today in the swampy lands in the Andes waiting for the end of the world, so they may return to their goddess.

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Photo taken 1983 - digitally captured from paper print

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The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.

 

Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.

 

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.

 

The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.

 

Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.

 

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.

 

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.

 

TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS

The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.

 

Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.

 

HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY

The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).

 

Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

 

In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or

 

P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.

 

GENOMICS

The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.

 

The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.

 

Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.

 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.

 

Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.

 

Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.

 

Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.

 

DIET

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.

 

A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.

 

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

 

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.

 

SOCIAL LIFE

Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.

 

Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.

 

During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.

 

Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.

 

COMMUNICATION

Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.

 

NESTING

Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.

 

Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.

 

REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING

Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.

 

Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.

 

Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.

 

Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.

 

Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.

 

When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

INTELLIGENCE

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.

 

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.

 

TOOL USE AND CULTURE

Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).

 

Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.

 

Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.

 

In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.

 

POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES

A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.

 

During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

 

ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS

Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.

 

Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.

 

Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.

 

Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.

 

A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.

 

A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.

 

LEGAL STATUS

In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.

 

CONSERVATION

CONSERVATION STATUS

The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

 

The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.

 

Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.

 

Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.

 

During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.

 

Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.

 

CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS

A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

 

Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.

 

Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Photo taken 1983 - digitally captured from paper print

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The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.

 

Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.

 

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.

 

The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.

 

Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.

 

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.

 

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.

 

TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS

The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.

 

Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.

 

HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY

The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).

 

Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

 

In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or

 

P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.

 

GENOMICS

The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.

 

The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.

 

Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.

 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.

 

Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.

 

Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.

 

Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.

 

DIET

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.

 

A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.

 

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

 

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.

 

SOCIAL LIFE

Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.

 

Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.

 

During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.

 

Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.

 

COMMUNICATION

Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.

 

NESTING

Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.

 

Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.

 

REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING

Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.

 

Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.

 

Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.

 

Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.

 

Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.

 

When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

INTELLIGENCE

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.

 

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.

 

TOOL USE AND CULTURE

Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).

 

Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.

 

Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.

 

In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.

 

POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES

A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.

 

During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

 

ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS

Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.

 

Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.

 

Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.

 

Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.

 

A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.

 

A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.

 

LEGAL STATUS

In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.

 

CONSERVATION

CONSERVATION STATUS

The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

 

The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.

 

Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.

 

Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.

 

During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.

 

Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.

 

CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS

A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

 

Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.

 

Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

The cat (Felis catus), commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae. Recent advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the domestication of the cat occurred in the Near East around 7500 BC. It is commonly kept as a house pet and farm cat, but also ranges freely as a feral cat avoiding human contact. It is valued by humans for companionship and its ability to kill vermin. Because of its retractable claws it is adapted to killing small prey like mice and rats. It has a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth, and its night vision and sense of smell are well developed. It is a social species, but a solitary hunter and a crepuscular predator. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting as well as cat body language. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by small mammals. It also secretes and perceives pheromones.

 

Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to late autumn in temperate zones and throughout the year in equatorial regions, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens. Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Animal population control of cats may be achieved by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of bird, mammal and reptile species.

 

As of 2017, the domestic cat was the second most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households owning at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat, with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020. As of 2021, there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world.

 

Etymology and naming

The origin of the English word cat, Old English catt, is thought to be the Late Latin word cattus, which was first used at the beginning of the 6th century. The Late Latin word may be derived from an unidentified African language. The Nubian word kaddîska 'wildcat' and Nobiin kadīs are possible sources or cognates. The Nubian word may be a loan from Arabic قَطّ‎ qaṭṭ ~ قِطّ qiṭṭ.

 

The forms might also have derived from an ancient Germanic word that was imported into Latin and then into Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. The word may be derived from Germanic and Northern European languages, and ultimately be borrowed from Uralic, cf. Northern Sámi gáđfi, 'female stoat', and Hungarian hölgy, 'lady, female stoat'; from Proto-Uralic *käďwä, 'female (of a furred animal)'.

 

The English puss, extended as pussy and pussycat, is attested from the 16th century and may have been introduced from Dutch poes or from Low German puuskatte, related to Swedish kattepus, or Norwegian pus, pusekatt. Similar forms exist in Lithuanian puižė and Irish puisín or puiscín. The etymology of this word is unknown, but it may have arisen from a sound used to attract a cat.

 

A male cat is called a tom or tomcat (or a gib, if neutered). A female is called a queen or a molly, if spayed, especially in a cat-breeding context. A juvenile cat is referred to as a kitten. In Early Modern English, the word kitten was interchangeable with the now-obsolete word catling.

 

A group of cats can be referred to as a clowder or a glaring.

 

Taxonomy

The scientific name Felis catus was proposed by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 for a domestic cat. Felis catus domesticus was proposed by Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben in 1777. Felis daemon proposed by Konstantin Satunin in 1904 was a black cat from the Transcaucasus, later identified as a domestic cat.

 

In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled that the domestic cat is a distinct species, namely Felis catus. In 2007, it was considered a subspecies, F. silvestris catus, of the European wildcat (F. silvestris) following results of phylogenetic research. In 2017, the IUCN Cat Classification Taskforce followed the recommendation of the ICZN in regarding the domestic cat as a distinct species, Felis catus.

 

Evolution

Main article: Cat evolution

The domestic cat is a member of the Felidae, a family that had a common ancestor about 10 to 15 million years ago. The evolutionary radiation of the Felidae began in Asia during the Miocene around 8.38 to 14.45 million years ago. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA of all Felidae species indicates a radiation at 6.46 to 16.76 million years ago. The genus Felis genetically diverged from other Felidae around 6 to 7 million years ago. Results of phylogenetic research shows that the wild members of this genus evolved through sympatric or parapatric speciation, whereas the domestic cat evolved through artificial selection. The domestic cat and its closest wild ancestor are diploid and both possess 38 chromosomes and roughly 20,000 genes.

 

Domestication

See also: Domestication of the cat and Cats in ancient Egypt

It was long thought that the domestication of the cat began in ancient Egypt, where cats were venerated from around 3100 BC, However, the earliest known indication for the taming of an African wildcat was excavated close by a human Neolithic grave in Shillourokambos, southern Cyprus, dating to about 7500–7200 BC. Since there is no evidence of native mammalian fauna on Cyprus, the inhabitants of this Neolithic village most likely brought the cat and other wild mammals to the island from the Middle Eastern mainland. Scientists therefore assume that African wildcats were attracted to early human settlements in the Fertile Crescent by rodents, in particular the house mouse (Mus musculus), and were tamed by Neolithic farmers. This mutual relationship between early farmers and tamed cats lasted thousands of years. As agricultural practices spread, so did tame and domesticated cats. Wildcats of Egypt contributed to the maternal gene pool of the domestic cat at a later time.

The earliest known evidence for the occurrence of the domestic cat in Greece dates to around 1200 BC. Greek, Phoenician, Carthaginian and Etruscan traders introduced domestic cats to southern Europe. During the Roman Empire they were introduced to Corsica and Sardinia before the beginning of the 1st millennium. By the 5th century BC, they were familiar animals around settlements in Magna Graecia and Etruria. By the end of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Egyptian domestic cat lineage had arrived in a Baltic Sea port in northern Germany.

 

The leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) was tamed independently in China around 5500 BC. This line of partially domesticated cats leaves no trace in the domestic cat populations of today.

 

During domestication, cats have undergone only minor changes in anatomy and behavior, and they are still capable of surviving in the wild. Several natural behaviors and characteristics of wildcats may have pre-adapted them for domestication as pets. These traits include their small size, social nature, obvious body language, love of play, and high intelligence. Captive Leopardus cats may also display affectionate behavior toward humans but were not domesticated. House cats often mate with feral cats. Hybridisation between domestic and other Felinae species is also possible, producing hybrids such as the Kellas cat in Scotland.

 

Development of cat breeds started in the mid 19th century. An analysis of the domestic cat genome revealed that the ancestral wildcat genome was significantly altered in the process of domestication, as specific mutations were selected to develop cat breeds. Most breeds are founded on random-bred domestic cats. Genetic diversity of these breeds varies between regions, and is lowest in purebred populations, which show more than 20 deleterious genetic disorders.

 

Characteristics

Main article: Cat anatomy

Size

The domestic cat has a smaller skull and shorter bones than the European wildcat. It averages about 46 cm (18 in) in head-to-body length and 23–25 cm (9.1–9.8 in) in height, with about 30 cm (12 in) long tails. Males are larger than females. Adult domestic cats typically weigh 4–5 kg (8.8–11.0 lb).

 

Skeleton

Cats have seven cervical vertebrae (as do most mammals); 13 thoracic vertebrae (humans have 12); seven lumbar vertebrae (humans have five); three sacral vertebrae (as do most mammals, but humans have five); and a variable number of caudal vertebrae in the tail (humans have only three to five vestigial caudal vertebrae, fused into an internal coccyx).  The extra lumbar and thoracic vertebrae account for the cat's spinal mobility and flexibility. Attached to the spine are 13 ribs, the shoulder, and the pelvis.  Unlike human arms, cat forelimbs are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones which allow them to pass their body through any space into which they can fit their head.

 

Skull

The cat skull is unusual among mammals in having very large eye sockets and a powerful specialized jaw.  Within the jaw, cats have teeth adapted for killing prey and tearing meat. When it overpowers its prey, a cat delivers a lethal neck bite with its two long canine teeth, inserting them between two of the prey's vertebrae and severing its spinal cord, causing irreversible paralysis and death. Compared to other felines, domestic cats have narrowly spaced canine teeth relative to the size of their jaw, which is an adaptation to their preferred prey of small rodents, which have small vertebrae.

 

The premolar and first molar together compose the carnassial pair on each side of the mouth, which efficiently shears meat into small pieces, like a pair of scissors. These are vital in feeding, since cats' small molars cannot chew food effectively, and cats are largely incapable of mastication.:  Cats tend to have better teeth than most humans, with decay generally less likely because of a thicker protective layer of enamel, a less damaging saliva, less retention of food particles between teeth, and a diet mostly devoid of sugar. Nonetheless, they are subject to occasional tooth loss and infection.

 

Claws

Cats have protractible and retractable claws. In their normal, relaxed position, the claws are sheathed with the skin and fur around the paw's toe pads. This keeps the claws sharp by preventing wear from contact with the ground and allows for the silent stalking of prey. The claws on the forefeet are typically sharper than those on the hindfeet. Cats can voluntarily extend their claws on one or more paws. They may extend their claws in hunting or self-defense, climbing, kneading, or for extra traction on soft surfaces. Cats shed the outside layer of their claw sheaths when scratching rough surfaces.

 

Most cats have five claws on their front paws and four on their rear paws. The dewclaw is proximal to the other claws. More proximally is a protrusion which appears to be a sixth "finger". This special feature of the front paws on the inside of the wrists has no function in normal walking but is thought to be an antiskidding device used while jumping. Some cat breeds are prone to having extra digits ("polydactyly"). Polydactylous cats occur along North America's northeast coast and in Great Britain.

 

Ambulation

The cat is digitigrade. It walks on the toes, with the bones of the feet making up the lower part of the visible leg. Unlike most mammals, it uses a "pacing" gait and moves both legs on one side of the body before the legs on the other side. It registers directly by placing each hind paw close to the track of the corresponding fore paw, minimizing noise and visible tracks. This also provides sure footing for hind paws when navigating rough terrain. As it speeds up from walking to trotting, its gait changes to a "diagonal" gait: The diagonally opposite hind and fore legs move simultaneously.

 

Balance

Cats are generally fond of sitting in high places or perching. A higher place may serve as a concealed site from which to hunt; domestic cats strike prey by pouncing from a perch such as a tree branch. Another possible explanation is that height gives the cat a better observation point, allowing it to survey its territory. A cat falling from heights of up to 3 m (9.8 ft) can right itself and land on its paws.

 

During a fall from a high place, a cat reflexively twists its body and rights itself to land on its feet using its acute sense of balance and flexibility. This reflex is known as the cat righting reflex. A cat always rights itself in the same way during a fall, if it has enough time to do so, which is the case in falls of 90 cm (3.0 ft) or more. How cats are able to right themselves when falling has been investigated as the "falling cat problem".

 

Coats

Main article: Cat coat genetics

The cat family (Felidae) can pass down many colors and patterns to their offspring. The domestic cat genes MC1R and ASIP allow for the variety of color in coats. The feline ASIP gene consists of three coding exons. Three novel microsatellite markers linked to ASIP were isolated from a domestic cat BAC clone containing this gene and were used to perform linkage analysis in a pedigree of 89 domestic cats that segregated for melanism.[citation needed]

 

Senses

Main article: Cat senses

Vision

A cat's nictitating membrane shown as it blinks

Cats have excellent night vision and can see at only one-sixth the light level required for human vision.  This is partly the result of cat eyes having a tapetum lucidum, which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, thereby increasing the eye's sensitivity to dim light. Large pupils are an adaptation to dim light. The domestic cat has slit pupils, which allow it to focus bright light without chromatic aberration. At low light, a cat's pupils expand to cover most of the exposed surface of its eyes. The domestic cat has rather poor color vision and only two types of cone cells, optimized for sensitivity to blue and yellowish green; its ability to distinguish between red and green is limited. A response to middle wavelengths from a system other than the rod cells might be due to a third type of cone. This appears to be an adaptation to low light levels rather than representing true trichromatic vision. Cats also have a nictitating membrane, allowing them to blink without hindering their vision.

 

Hearing

The domestic cat's hearing is most acute in the range of 500 Hz to 32 kHz. It can detect an extremely broad range of frequencies ranging from 55 Hz to 79 kHz, whereas humans can only detect frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. It can hear a range of 10.5 octaves, while humans and dogs can hear ranges of about 9 octaves. Its hearing sensitivity is enhanced by its large movable outer ears, the pinnae, which amplify sounds and help detect the location of a noise. It can detect ultrasound, which enables it to detect ultrasonic calls made by rodent prey. Recent research has shown that cats have socio-spatial cognitive abilities to create mental maps of owners' locations based on hearing owners' voices.

 

Smell

Cats have an acute sense of smell, due in part to their well-developed olfactory bulb and a large surface of olfactory mucosa, about 5.8 cm2 (0.90 in2) in area, which is about twice that of humans. Cats and many other animals have a Jacobson's organ in their mouths that is used in the behavioral process of flehmening. It allows them to sense certain aromas in a way that humans cannot. Cats are sensitive to pheromones such as 3-mercapto-3-methylbutan-1-ol, which they use to communicate through urine spraying and marking with scent glands. Many cats also respond strongly to plants that contain nepetalactone, especially catnip, as they can detect that substance at less than one part per billion. About 70–80% of cats are affected by nepetalactone. This response is also produced by other plants, such as silver vine (Actinidia polygama) and the herb valerian; it may be caused by the smell of these plants mimicking a pheromone and stimulating cats' social or sexual behaviors.

 

Taste

Cats have relatively few taste buds compared to humans (470 or so versus more than 9,000 on the human tongue). Domestic and wild cats share a taste receptor gene mutation that keeps their sweet taste buds from binding to sugary molecules, leaving them with no ability to taste sweetness. They, however, possess taste bud receptors specialized for acids, amino acids like protein, and bitter tastes. Their taste buds possess the receptors needed to detect umami. However, these receptors contain molecular changes that make the cat taste of umami different from that of humans. In humans, they detect the amino acids of glutamic acid and aspartic acid, but in cats they instead detect nucleotides, in this case inosine monophosphate and l-Histidine. These nucleotides are particularly enriched in tuna. This has been argued is why cats find tuna so palatable: as put by researchers into cat taste, "the specific combination of the high IMP and free l-Histidine contents of tuna" .. "produces a strong umami taste synergy that is highly preferred by cats". One of the researchers involved in this research has further claimed, "I think umami is as important for cats as sweet is for humans".[87]

 

Cats also have a distinct temperature preference for their food, preferring food with a temperature around 38 °C (100 °F) which is similar to that of a fresh kill; some cats reject cold food (which would signal to the cat that the "prey" item is long dead and therefore possibly toxic or decomposing).

 

Whiskers

To aid with navigation and sensation, cats have dozens of movable whiskers (vibrissae) over their body, especially their faces. These provide information on the width of gaps and on the location of objects in the dark, both by touching objects directly and by sensing air currents; they also trigger protective blink reflexes to protect the eyes from damage.: 47 

 

Behavior

See also: Cat behavior

Outdoor cats are active both day and night, although they tend to be slightly more active at night.[88] Domestic cats spend the majority of their time in the vicinity of their homes but can range many hundreds of meters from this central point. They establish territories that vary considerably in size, in one study ranging 7–28 ha (17–69 acres). The timing of cats' activity is quite flexible and varied but being low-light predators, they are generally crepuscular, which means they tend to be more active near dawn and dusk. However, house cats' behavior is also influenced by human activity and they may adapt to their owners' sleeping patterns to some extent.

 

Cats conserve energy by sleeping more than most animals, especially as they grow older. The daily duration of sleep varies, usually between 12 and 16 hours, with 13 and 14 being the average. Some cats can sleep as much as 20 hours. The term "cat nap" for a short rest refers to the cat's tendency to fall asleep (lightly) for a brief period. While asleep, cats experience short periods of rapid eye movement sleep often accompanied by muscle twitches, which suggests they are dreaming.

 

Sociability

The social behavior of the domestic cat ranges from widely dispersed individuals to feral cat colonies that gather around a food source, based on groups of co-operating females. Within such groups, one cat is usually dominant over the others. Each cat in a colony holds a distinct territory, with sexually active males having the largest territories, which are about 10 times larger than those of female cats and may overlap with several females' territories. These territories are marked by urine spraying, by rubbing objects at head height with secretions from facial glands, and by defecation. Between these territories are neutral areas where cats watch and greet one another without territorial conflicts. Outside these neutral areas, territory holders usually chase away stranger cats, at first by staring, hissing, and growling and, if that does not work, by short but noisy and violent attacks. Despite this colonial organization, cats do not have a social survival strategy or a herd behavior, and always hunt alone.

 

Life in proximity to humans and other domestic animals has led to a symbiotic social adaptation in cats, and cats may express great affection toward humans or other animals. Ethologically, a cat's human keeper functions as if a mother surrogate. Adult cats live their lives in a kind of extended kittenhood, a form of behavioral neoteny. Their high-pitched sounds may mimic the cries of a hungry human infant, making them particularly difficult for humans to ignore. Some pet cats are poorly socialized. In particular, older cats show aggressiveness toward newly arrived kittens, which include biting and scratching; this type of behavior is known as feline asocial aggression.

 

Redirected aggression is a common form of aggression which can occur in multiple cat households. In redirected aggression there is usually something that agitates the cat: this could be a sight, sound, or another source of stimuli which causes a heightened level of anxiety or arousal. If the cat cannot attack the stimuli, it may direct anger elsewhere by attacking or directing aggression to the nearest cat, dog, human or other being.

 

Domestic cats' scent rubbing behavior toward humans or other cats is thought to be a feline means for social bonding.

 

Communication

Main article: Cat communication

Domestic cats use many vocalizations for communication, including purring, trilling, hissing, growling/snarling, grunting, and several different forms of meowing. Their body language, including position of ears and tail, relaxation of the whole body, and kneading of the paws, are all indicators of mood. The tail and ears are particularly important social signal mechanisms in cats. A raised tail indicates a friendly greeting, and flattened ears indicate hostility. Tail-raising also indicates the cat's position in the group's social hierarchy, with dominant individuals raising their tails less often than subordinate ones. Feral cats are generally silent.: 208  Nose-to-nose touching is also a common greeting and may be followed by social grooming, which is solicited by one of the cats raising and tilting its head.

 

Purring may have developed as an evolutionary advantage as a signaling mechanism of reassurance between mother cats and nursing kittens, who are thought to use it as a care-soliciting signal. Post-nursing cats also often purr as a sign of contentment: when being petted, becoming relaxed, or eating. Even though purring is popularly interpreted as indicative of pleasure, it has been recorded in a wide variety of circumstances, most of which involve physical contact between the cat and another, presumably trusted individual. Some cats have been observed to purr continuously when chronically ill or in apparent pain.

 

The exact mechanism by which cats purr has long been elusive, but it has been proposed that purring is generated via a series of sudden build-ups and releases of pressure as the glottis is opened and closed, which causes the vocal folds to separate forcefully. The laryngeal muscles in control of the glottis are thought to be driven by a neural oscillator which generates a cycle of contraction and release every 30–40 milliseconds (giving a frequency of 33 to 25 Hz).

 

Domestic cats observed in a rescue facility have total of 276 distinct facial expressions based on 26 different facial movements; each facial expression corresponds to different social functions that are likely influenced by domestication.

 

Grooming

Cats are known for spending considerable amounts of time licking their coats to keep them clean. The cat's tongue has backward-facing spines about 500 μm long, which are called papillae. These contain keratin which makes them rigid so the papillae act like a hairbrush. Some cats, particularly longhaired cats, occasionally regurgitate hairballs of fur that have collected in their stomachs from grooming. These clumps of fur are usually sausage-shaped and about 2–3 cm (0.79–1.18 in) long. Hairballs can be prevented with remedies that ease elimination of the hair through the gut, as well as regular grooming of the coat with a comb or stiff brush.

 

Fighting

Among domestic cats, males are more likely to fight than females. Among feral cats, the most common reason for cat fighting is competition between two males to mate with a female. In such cases, most fights are won by the heavier male. Another common reason for fighting in domestic cats is the difficulty of establishing territories within a small home. Female cats also fight over territory or to defend their kittens. Neutering will decrease or eliminate this behavior in many cases, suggesting that the behavior is linked to sex hormones.

 

When cats become aggressive, they try to make themselves appear larger and more threatening by raising their fur, arching their backs, turning sideways and hissing or spitting. Often, the ears are pointed down and back to avoid damage to the inner ear and potentially listen for any changes behind them while focused forward. Cats may also vocalize loudly and bare their teeth in an effort to further intimidate their opponents. Fights usually consist of grappling and delivering powerful slaps to the face and body with the forepaws as well as bites. Cats also throw themselves to the ground in a defensive posture to rake their opponent's belly with their powerful hind legs.

 

Serious damage is rare, as the fights are usually short in duration, with the loser running away with little more than a few scratches to the face and ears. Fights for mating rights are typically more severe and injuries may include deep puncture wounds and lacerations. Normally, serious injuries from fighting are limited to infections of scratches and bites, though these can occasionally kill cats if untreated. In addition, bites are probably the main route of transmission of feline immunodeficiency virus. Sexually active males are usually involved in many fights during their lives, and often have decidedly battered faces with obvious scars and cuts to their ears and nose. Cats are willing to threaten animals larger than them to defend their territory, such as dogs and foxes.

 

Hunting and feeding

See also: Cat food

The shape and structure of cats' cheeks is insufficient to allow them to take in liquids using suction. Therefore, when drinking they lap with the tongue to draw liquid upward into their mouths. Lapping at a rate of four times a second, the cat touches the smooth tip of its tongue to the surface of the water, and quickly retracts it like a corkscrew, drawing water upward.

 

Feral cats and free-fed house cats consume several small meals in a day. The frequency and size of meals varies between individuals. They select food based on its temperature, smell and texture; they dislike chilled foods and respond most strongly to moist foods rich in amino acids, which are similar to meat. Cats reject novel flavors (a response termed neophobia) and learn quickly to avoid foods that have tasted unpleasant in the past. It is also a common misconception that cats like milk/cream, as they tend to avoid sweet food and milk. Most adult cats are lactose intolerant; the sugar in milk is not easily digested and may cause soft stools or diarrhea. Some also develop odd eating habits and like to eat or chew on things like wool, plastic, cables, paper, string, aluminum foil, or even coal. This condition, pica, can threaten their health, depending on the amount and toxicity of the items eaten.

 

Cats hunt small prey, primarily birds and rodents, and are often used as a form of pest control. Other common small creatures such as lizards and snakes may also become prey. Cats use two hunting strategies, either stalking prey actively, or waiting in ambush until an animal comes close enough to be captured. The strategy used depends on the prey species in the area, with cats waiting in ambush outside burrows, but tending to actively stalk birds.: 153  Domestic cats are a major predator of wildlife in the United States, killing an estimated 1.3 to 4.0 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion mammals annually.

 

Certain species appear more susceptible than others; in one English village, for example, 30% of house sparrow mortality was linked to the domestic cat. In the recovery of ringed robins (Erithacus rubecula) and dunnocks (Prunella modularis) in Britain, 31% of deaths were a result of cat predation. In parts of North America, the presence of larger carnivores such as coyotes which prey on cats and other small predators reduces the effect of predation by cats and other small predators such as opossums and raccoons on bird numbers and variety.

 

Perhaps the best-known element of cats' hunting behavior, which is commonly misunderstood and often appalls cat owners because it looks like torture, is that cats often appear to "play" with prey by releasing and recapturing it. This cat and mouse behavior is due to an instinctive imperative to ensure that the prey is weak enough to be killed without endangering the cat.

 

Another poorly understood element of cat hunting behavior is the presentation of prey to human guardians. One explanation is that cats adopt humans into their social group and share excess kill with others in the group according to the dominance hierarchy, in which humans are reacted to as if they are at or near the top. Another explanation is that they attempt to teach their guardians to hunt or to help their human as if feeding "an elderly cat, or an inept kitten". This hypothesis is inconsistent with the fact that male cats also bring home prey, despite males having negligible involvement in raising kittens.:

 

Play

Main article: Cat play and toys

Domestic cats, especially young kittens, are known for their love of play. This behavior mimics hunting and is important in helping kittens learn to stalk, capture, and kill prey. Cats also engage in play fighting, with each other and with humans. This behavior may be a way for cats to practice the skills needed for real combat, and might also reduce any fear they associate with launching attacks on other animals.

 

Cats also tend to play with toys more when they are hungry. Owing to the close similarity between play and hunting, cats prefer to play with objects that resemble prey, such as small furry toys that move rapidly, but rapidly lose interest. They become habituated to a toy they have played with before. String is often used as a toy, but if it is eaten, it can become caught at the base of the cat's tongue and then move into the intestines, a medical emergency which can cause serious illness, even death. Owing to the risks posed by cats eating string, it is sometimes replaced with a laser pointer's dot, which cats may chase.

 

Reproduction

See also: Kitten

The cat secretes and perceives pheromones. Female cats, called queens, are polyestrous with several estrus cycles during a year, lasting usually 21 days. They are usually ready to mate between early February and August in northern temperate zones and throughout the year in equatorial regions.

 

Several males, called tomcats, are attracted to a female in heat. They fight over her, and the victor wins the right to mate. At first, the female rejects the male, but eventually, the female allows the male to mate. The female utters a loud yowl as the male pulls out of her because a male cat's penis has a band of about 120–150 backward-pointing penile spines, which are about 1 mm (0.039 in) long; upon withdrawal of the penis, the spines may provide the female with increased sexual stimulation, which acts to induce ovulation.

 

After mating, the female cleans her vulva thoroughly. If a male attempts to mate with her at this point, the female attacks him. After about 20 to 30 minutes, once the female is finished grooming, the cycle will repeat. Because ovulation is not always triggered by a single mating, females may not be impregnated by the first male with which they mate. Furthermore, cats are superfecund; that is, a female may mate with more than one male when she is in heat, with the result that different kittens in a litter may have different fathers.

 

The morula forms 124 hours after conception. At 148 hours, early blastocysts form. At 10–12 days, implantation occurs. The gestation of queens lasts between 64 and 67 days, with an average of 65 days.

 

Data on the reproductive capacity of more than 2,300 free-ranging queens were collected during a study between May 1998 and October 2000. They had one to six kittens per litter, with an average of three kittens. They produced a mean of 1.4 litters per year, but a maximum of three litters in a year. Of 169 kittens, 127 died before they were six months old due to a trauma caused in most cases by dog attacks and road accidents. The first litter is usually smaller than subsequent litters. Kittens are weaned between six and seven weeks of age. Queens normally reach sexual maturity at 5–10 months, and males at 5–7 months. This varies depending on breed. Kittens reach puberty at the age of 9–10 months.

 

Cats are ready to go to new homes at about 12 weeks of age, when they are ready to leave their mother. They can be surgically sterilized (spayed or castrated) as early as seven weeks to limit unwanted reproduction. This surgery also prevents undesirable sex-related behavior, such as aggression, territory marking (spraying urine) in males and yowling (calling) in females. Traditionally, this surgery was performed at around six to nine months of age, but it is increasingly being performed before puberty, at about three to six months. In the United States, about 80% of household cats are neutered.

 

Lifespan and health

Main articles: Cat health and Aging in cats

The average lifespan of pet cats has risen in recent decades. In the early 1980s, it was about seven years,: 33  rising to 9.4 years in 1995: 33  and an average of about 13 years as of 2014 and 2023. Some cats have been reported as surviving into their 30s, with the oldest known cat dying at a verified age of 38.

 

Neutering increases life expectancy: one study found castrated male cats live twice as long as intact males, while spayed female cats live 62% longer than intact females.: 35  Having a cat neutered confers health benefits, because castrated males cannot develop testicular cancer, spayed females cannot develop uterine or ovarian cancer, and both have a reduced risk of mammary cancer.

 

Disease

Main article: List of feline diseases

About 250 heritable genetic disorders have been identified in cats, many similar to human inborn errors of metabolism. The high level of similarity among the metabolism of mammals allows many of these feline diseases to be diagnosed using genetic tests that were originally developed for use in humans, as well as the use of cats as animal models in the study of the human diseases. Diseases affecting domestic cats include acute infections, parasitic infestations, injuries, and chronic diseases such as kidney disease, thyroid disease, and arthritis. Vaccinations are available for many infectious diseases, as are treatments to eliminate parasites such as worms, ticks, and fleas.

 

Ecology

Habitats

The domestic cat is a cosmopolitan species and occurs across much of the world. It is adaptable and now present on all continents except Antarctica, and on 118 of the 131 main groups of islands, even on the isolated Kerguelen Islands. Due to its ability to thrive in almost any terrestrial habitat, it is among the world's most invasive species. It lives on small islands with no human inhabitants. Feral cats can live in forests, grasslands, tundra, coastal areas, agricultural land, scrublands, urban areas, and wetlands.

 

The unwantedness that leads to the domestic cat being treated as an invasive species is twofold. On one hand, as it is little altered from the wildcat, it can readily interbreed with the wildcat. This hybridization poses a danger to the genetic distinctiveness of some wildcat populations, particularly in Scotland and Hungary, possibly also the Iberian Peninsula, and where protected natural areas are close to human-dominated landscapes, such as Kruger National Park in South Africa. However, its introduction to places where no native felines are present also contributes to the decline of native species.

 

Ferality

Main article: Feral cat

Feral cats are domestic cats that were born in or have reverted to a wild state. They are unfamiliar with and wary of humans and roam freely in urban and rural areas. The numbers of feral cats is not known, but estimates of the United States feral population range from 25 to 60 million. Feral cats may live alone, but most are found in large colonies, which occupy a specific territory and are usually associated with a source of food. Famous feral cat colonies are found in Rome around the Colosseum and Forum Romanum, with cats at some of these sites being fed and given medical attention by volunteers.

 

Public attitudes toward feral cats vary widely, from seeing them as free-ranging pets to regarding them as vermin.

 

Some feral cats can be successfully socialized and 're-tamed' for adoption; young cats, especially kittens and cats that have had prior experience and contact with humans are the most receptive to these efforts.

 

Impact on wildlife

Main article: Cat predation on wildlife

On islands, birds can contribute as much as 60% of a cat's diet. In nearly all cases, the cat cannot be identified as the sole cause for reducing the numbers of island birds, and in some instances, eradication of cats has caused a "mesopredator release" effect; where the suppression of top carnivores creates an abundance of smaller predators that cause a severe decline in their shared prey. Domestic cats are a contributing factor to the decline of many species, a factor that has ultimately led, in some cases, to extinction. The South Island piopio, Chatham rail, and the New Zealand merganser are a few from a long list, with the most extreme case being the flightless Lyall's wren, which was driven to extinction only a few years after its discovery. One feral cat in New Zealand killed 102 New Zealand lesser short-tailed bats in seven days. In the US, feral and free-ranging domestic cats kill an estimated 6.3 – 22.3 billion mammals annually.

 

In Australia, the impact of cats on mammal populations is even greater than the impact of habitat loss. More than one million reptiles are killed by feral cats each day, representing 258 species. Cats have contributed to the extinction of the Navassa curly-tailed lizard and Chioninia coctei.

 

Interaction with humans

Main article: Human interaction with cats

Cats are common pets throughout the world, and their worldwide population as of 2007 exceeded 500 million. As of 2017, the domestic cat was the second most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households owning at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat, with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020. As of 2021, there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world.

 

Cats have been used for millennia to control rodents, notably around grain stores and aboard ships, and both uses extend to the present day.

 

As well as being kept as pets, cats are also used in the international fur trade and leather industries for making coats, hats, blankets, stuffed toys, shoes, gloves, and musical instruments. About 24 cats are needed to make a cat-fur coat. This use has been outlawed in the United States since 2000 and in the European Union (as well as the United Kingdom) since 2007.

 

Cat pelts have been used for superstitious purposes as part of the practice of witchcraft, and are still made into blankets in Switzerland as traditional medicine thought to cure rheumatism.

 

A few attempts to build a cat census have been made over the years, both through associations or national and international organizations (such as that of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies) and over the Internet, but such a task does not seem simple to achieve. General estimates for the global population of domestic cats range widely from anywhere between 200 million to 600 million. Walter Chandoha made his career photographing cats after his 1949 images of Loco, an especially charming stray taken in, were published around the world. He is reported to have photographed 90,000 cats during his career and maintained an archive of 225,000 images that he drew from for publications during his lifetime.

 

Shows

Main article: Cat show

A cat show is a judged event in which the owners of cats compete to win titles in various cat-registering organizations by entering their cats to be judged after a breed standard. It is often required that a cat must be healthy and vaccinated in order to participate in a cat show. Both pedigreed and non-purebred companion ("moggy") cats are admissible, although the rules differ depending on the organization. Competing cats are compared to the applicable breed standard, and assessed for temperament.

 

Infection

Main article: Feline zoonosis

Cats can be infected or infested with viruses, bacteria, fungus, protozoans, arthropods or worms that can transmit diseases to humans. In some cases, the cat exhibits no symptoms of the disease. The same disease can then become evident in a human. The likelihood that a person will become diseased depends on the age and immune status of the person. Humans who have cats living in their home or in close association are more likely to become infected. Others might also acquire infections from cat feces and parasites exiting the cat's body. Some of the infections of most concern include salmonella, cat-scratch disease and toxoplasmosis.

 

History and mythology

Main articles: Cultural depictions of cats and Cats in ancient Egypt

In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped, and the goddess Bastet often depicted in cat form, sometimes taking on the war-like aspect of a lioness. The Greek historian Herodotus reported that killing a cat was forbidden, and when a household cat died, the entire family mourned and shaved their eyebrows. Families took their dead cats to the sacred city of Bubastis, where they were embalmed and buried in sacred repositories. Herodotus expressed astonishment at the domestic cats in Egypt, because he had only ever seen wildcats.

 

Ancient Greeks and Romans kept weasels as pets, which were seen as the ideal rodent-killers. The earliest unmistakable evidence of the Greeks having domestic cats comes from two coins from Magna Graecia dating to the mid-fifth century BC showing Iokastos and Phalanthos, the legendary founders of Rhegion and Taras respectively, playing with their pet cats. The usual ancient Greek word for 'cat' was ailouros, meaning 'thing with the waving tail'. Cats are rarely mentioned in ancient Greek literature. Aristotle remarked in his History of Animals that "female cats are naturally lecherous." The Greeks later syncretized their own goddess Artemis with the Egyptian goddess Bastet, adopting Bastet's associations with cats and ascribing them to Artemis. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, when the deities flee to Egypt and take animal forms, the goddess Diana turns into a cat.

 

Cats eventually displaced weasels as the pest control of choice because they were more pleasant to have around the house and were more enthusiastic hunters of mice. During the Middle Ages, many of Artemis's associations with cats were grafted onto the Virgin Mary. Cats are often shown in icons of Annunciation and of the Holy Family and, according to Italian folklore, on the same night that Mary gave birth to Jesus, a cat in Bethlehem gave birth to a kitten. Domestic cats were spread throughout much of the rest of the world during the Age of Discovery, as ships' cats were carried on sailing ships to control shipboard rodents and as good-luck charms.

 

Several ancient religions believed cats are exalted souls, companions or guides for humans, that are all-knowing but mute so they cannot influence decisions made by humans. In Japan, the maneki neko cat is a symbol of good fortune. In Norse mythology, Freyja, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, is depicted as riding a chariot drawn by cats. In Jewish legend, the first cat was living in the house of the first man Adam as a pet that got rid of mice. The cat was once partnering with the first dog before the latter broke an oath they had made which resulted in enmity between the descendants of these two animals. It is also written that neither cats nor foxes are represented in the water, while every other animal has an incarnation species in the water. Although no species are sacred in Islam, cats are revered by Muslims. Some Western writers have stated Muhammad had a favorite cat, Muezza. He is reported to have loved cats so much, "he would do without his cloak rather than disturb one that was sleeping on it". The story has no origin in early Muslim writers, and seems to confuse a story of a later Sufi saint, Ahmed ar-Rifa'i, centuries after Muhammad. One of the companions of Muhammad was known as Abu Hurayrah ("father of the kitten"), in reference to his documented affection to cats.

 

Superstitions and rituals

Many cultures have negative superstitions about cats. An example would be the belief that encountering a black cat ("crossing one's path") leads to bad luck, or that cats are witches' familiars used to augment a witch's powers and skills. The killing of cats in Medieval Ypres, Belgium, is commemorated in the innocuous present-day Kattenstoet (cat parade). In mid-16th century France, cats would be burnt alive as a form of entertainment, particularly during midsummer festivals. According to Norman Davies, the assembled people "shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized". The remaining ashes were sometimes taken back home by the people for good luck.

 

According to a myth in many cultures, cats have multiple lives. In many countries, they are believed to have nine lives, but in Italy, Germany, Greece, Brazil and some Spanish-speaking regions, they are said to have seven lives, while in Arabic traditions, the number of lives is six. An early mention of the myth can be found in John Heywood's The Proverbs of John Heywood (1546)

 

Husband, (quoth she), ye studie, be merrie now,

And even as ye thinke now, so come to yow.

Nay not so, (quoth he), for my thought to tell right,

I thinke how you lay groning, wife, all last night.

Husband, a groning horse and a groning wife

Never faile their master, (quoth she), for my life.

No wife, a woman hath nine lives like a cat.

 

The myth is attributed to the natural suppleness and swiftness cats exhibit to escape life-threatening situations. Also lending credence to this myth is the fact that falling cats often land on their feet, using an instinctive righting reflex to twist their bodies around. Nonetheless, cats can still be injured or killed by a high fall.

statue ashantie Akan akan Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Bénin statue de fertilité Art Africain Statuette Ashanti de la fertilité (XIXe siècle) Les sculpteurs ghanéens du peuple Ashanti sont célèbres pour leur « Akua'ba », des statuettes de la fertilité consacrées que les jeunes femmes portent toujours sur elles.Akwaba

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Akua ba Akwaba African Fertility Doll Symboldictionarynet. An Akuaba Is A Carved Figure Used By The African Ashanti Tribe As A Talisman.Old Akua Mma or Akwaba - Ashanti - Ghana - African Dolls Ethnie ...

Old Akua Mma or Akwaba - Ashanti - Ghana - African Dolls Ethnie Ashanti / Asante  - Private collection, Traditional ancient Ashanti doll,Akua’ba (Akwaba, African Fertility Doll)

 

An Akua’ba is a carved figure used by the African Ashanti tribe as a talisman to promote fertility and and to protect pregnant women.

 

A woman who hopes to become pregnant will keep such a blessed doll on her person, and dresses and cares for it as one would a real child.

 

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The Asante (Ashanti) believe that the children gain their “ntoro” (spirit) from their father and clan membership from their mothers’ blood, “mogya”. In turn, a female childs’ entire life, was a preparation for motherhood. Even now, the “Akua’ba” (fertility doll) of the Akan (ancestors of the Asante) and Asante are used by young women hoping for a child. Legend has it that a woman who has worn one of these dolls, will give birth to a beautiful child. Bodily aesthetic beauty to the Asante is a long neck, a high forehead and a small mouth. Traditionally, the user of the Asante doll would have it prayed over, strap it to her back, carry it the way she would a real child and generally tend to the doll as if it had life. Scarifications will vary slightly from doll to doll. Today, these dolls are placed in the main area of intimacy.

According to African legend, the bearer of a fertility doll will give birth to a beautiful child. In Ghana and in most parts of Africa, fertility dolls represent youth and fertility. Akua'maa are carved wooden figures that are believed to induce pregnancy and ensure safe delivery at birth.

A priest giving the fertility deity conducts the rites, afterwards the women carries the doll and treats it like a real child, dressing it up, adorning it with jewelry and putting it to bed. After the mother gives birth to a daughter, she may give the doll to her to play with (this type of gift teaches child care)

 

If one closely observe the structure of a fertility doll you will notice a distinct similarity to the Ankh, an ancient Egyptian or Kamitic symbol of life. It has a huge round head and body, and it is shaped like a cross. The head is symbolic of the feminine womb. The shape is a reminder of the active, yet passive manifestations of the womb, which are receptive and gestation. The female egg receives the male sperm, thus gestation occurs: but can only happen during the ovulation point in the woman's cycle. This is why the womb is considered receptive, it is a receiver and receptacle.

 

The body of the fertility doll is shaped like a cross, and is similar to the lower part of the ankh. This lower section is similar to a Kamitic symbol known as the Djed, which according to legend is the backbone of the God Ausar (Osins). In the spiritual teachings of ancient Egypt. Ausar possesses great power because his emotions and thoughts are stable and unwavering. The Djed symbol, being Ausar's spinal energy, but needs an antenna to receive spinal energy. This column conducts both parts of the Akwoba figure and are important.

 

The Akau'maa illustrate the Ashanti concept of beauty: a high oval forehead that in reality is achieved by massaging an infant's soft skull; a small mouth: and a neck ringed to depict creases caused by fat, indicating a healthy diet.

 

What makes the fertility doll so special is it's reason for being created. African ancestors made symbols out of everything. This brings us to Hieroglyphics and the reason why they are so intriguing.

 

In the past people would not get caught up in language barriers, as symbols served the same meaning for all nations and therefore the Fertility doll is one of those symbols that stood the test of time. For as long as human history has existed, fertility dolls or symbols have been revered . Long before we knew how babies were made, how crops grew, we knew that our existence depended on renewal of fertility.

 

Poupee Ashanti De La Fertilite Archéologie Anthropologie Dahomey Ethiopie Ethnologues Bamana Bamileke Bam Niger Nigeria Nok Sri Lanka Tanzanie Togo Voyages Zimbabwe Aduma Baga Bamana Bamileke Bamum Banda Beembe Bidjogo Boa Bobo Bozo Bwa Bwende Chamba Diola Dogon Fang Galoa Grebo Hemba Holo Ibibio Jukun Kissi Kongo Konso Kota Kuba Kwele Kwere Lega Luba Luchazi Luluwa Lunda Luvale Makonde Mama Mambila Mangbetu Matapa Mbete Mbunda Mende Mossi Mumuye Mwila Ndebele Ngangela Ngbaka Nguni Nkanu Nyamwezi Nzakara Oron Ovimbundu Pende Punu Pygmee Salampasu Senoufo Sherbro Shona Solongo Songo Songyen Sotho Swazi Tabwa Teke Temne Tonga Toussian Tshokwe Tsogho Tsonga Venda Vili Woyo Wurkun Yaka Suku Yombe Yoruba Zande Zaramo Zulu

This shot was captured in MASAI MARA (AUG 2008) by the dirt road,we just reached at the point where the young male and the female were relaxing and within a few minutes the male started to mate with the female,the mating may last from 2 - 7 days during which time repeated copulation helps stimulate ovulation.May copulate up to 80 times in 24 hours....like the face of the male..

The Eastern Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis) is a species of bat from the Vespertilionidae family. See also the Desert red bat (Lasiurus blossevillii), a related species.

 

Eastern red bats are widespread across eastern North America, with additional records in Bermuda. It is also scarce but widespread throughout many of the Bahamian islands. This is a medium-sized Vespertilionid, averaging weights of 9.5-14 g and measurements of 112.3 mm in total length. Adults are usually dimorphic: males have red hair while females are chestnut-colored with whitish frosting on the tips of the fur.

 

Like most Vespertilionids, eastern red bats are insectivorous. Moths (Lepidoptera) form the majority of the diet, but red bats also prey heavily on beetles (Coleoptera), flies (Diptera), and other insects. Echolocation calls have low minimum frequencies, but calls are highly variable ranging from (35-50 kHz). Eastern red bats are best suited for foraging in open spaces due to their body size, wing shape, and echolocation call structure. However, red bats are frequently captured by researches foraging over narrow streams and roads

 

Mating likely occurs in late summer or autumn and the sperm is stored in the female's reproductive tract until spring when ovulation and fertilization occurs. In June, females usually give birth to three or four young and then roost with their young until they are weaned. Males roost alone throughout the Summer. High temperature demands associated with gestation and rearing young may limit the northern range for reproductive females. Eastern red bats often roost amongst live or dead leaves on the branches of live hardwood trees, but have also been found using loblolly pine trees in pine plantations.

 

In late summer, eastern red bats from the northern parts of the range may migrate south for the winter, although little is known about migration routes or overwintering range. In winter, red bats forage for insects on warm nights and even warm days. On warm days during the winter, red bats enter torpor while roosting in the canopy of hardwood or coniferous trees, but during cold bouts they crawl underneath dead leaf litter on the ground and use their furred tail as a blanket.

In general doctors prescribe clomid, women who are desire to become pregnant with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) or irregular periods...

 

Some studies shows women who are having problems with ovulation, Clomid is the best option to increase 80% chance of ovulating with in the first 3 months...

 

Click here to read more...

 

The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), sometimes called the koala bear, is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae and its closest living relatives are the wombats. The koala is found in coastal areas of the mainland's eastern and southern regions, inhabiting Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. It is easily recognisable by its stout, tailless body and large head with round, fluffy ears and large, dark nose. The koala has a body length of 60–85 cm (24–33 in) and weighs 4–15 kg (9–33 lb). Fur colour ranges from silver grey to chocolate brown. Koalas from the northern populations are typically smaller and lighter in colour than their counterparts further south. These populations possibly are separate subspecies, but this is disputed.

 

Koalas typically inhabit open Eucalyptus woodland, as the leaves of these trees make up most of their diet. This eucalypt diet has low nutritional and caloric content and contains toxic compounds that deter most other mammals from feeding on it. Koalas are largely sedentary and sleep up to twenty hours a day. They are asocial animals, and bonding exists only between mothers and dependent offspring. Adult males communicate with loud bellows that intimidate rivals and attract mates. Males mark their presence with secretions from scent glands located on their chests. Being marsupials, koalas give birth to underdeveloped young that crawl into their mothers' pouches, where they stay for the first six to seven months of their lives. These young koalas, known as joeys, are fully weaned around a year old. Koalas have few natural predators and parasites, but are threatened by various pathogens, such as Chlamydiaceae bacteria and koala retrovirus.

 

Because of their distinctive appearance, koalas, along with kangaroos and emus, are recognised worldwide as symbols of Australia. They were hunted by Indigenous Australians and depicted in myths and cave art for millennia. The first recorded encounter between a European and a koala was in 1798, and an image of the animal was published in 1810 by naturalist George Perry. Botanist Robert Brown wrote the first detailed scientific description of the koala in 1814, although his work remained unpublished for 180 years. Popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala, introducing the species to the general British public. Further details about the animal's biology were revealed in the 19th century by several English scientists. Koalas are listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Among the many threats to their existence are habitat destruction caused by agriculture, urbanisation, droughts, and associated bushfires, some related to climate change. In February 2022, the koala was officially listed as endangered in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Queensland.

 

Etymology

The word "koala" comes from the Dharug gula, meaning 'no water'. Although the vowel "u" was originally written in the English orthography as "oo" (in spellings such as coola or koolah — two syllables), the spelling later became "oa" and the word is now pronounced in three syllables, possibly in error.

 

Adopted by white settlers, "koala" became one of several hundred Aboriginal loan words in Australian English, where it was also commonly referred to as "native bear", later "koala bear", for its supposed resemblance to a bear. It is also one of several Aboriginal words that made it into International English alongside words like "didgeridoo" and "kangaroo". The generic name, Phascolarctos, is derived from the Greek words φάσκωλος (phaskolos) 'pouch' and ἄρκτος (arktos) 'bear'. The specific name, cinereus, is Latin for 'ash coloured'.

 

Taxonomy

The koala was given its generic name Phascolarctos in 1816 by French zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, who would not give it a specific name until further review. In 1819, German zoologist Georg August Goldfuss gave it the binomial Lipurus cinereus. Because Phascolarctos was published first, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, it has priority as the official name of the genus. French naturalist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest coined the name Phascolarctos fuscus in 1820, suggesting that the brown-coloured versions were a different species than the grey ones. Other names suggested by European authors included Marodactylus cinereus by Goldfuss in 1820, P. flindersii by René Primevère Lesson in 1827, and P. koala by John Edward Gray in 1827.

 

Evolution

The koala is classified with wombats (family Vombatidae) and several extinct families (including marsupial tapirs, marsupial lions and giant wombats) in the suborder Vombatiformes within the order Diprotodontia. The Vombatiformes are a sister group to a clade that includes macropods (kangaroos and wallabies) and possums. The koala's lineage possibly branched off around 40 million years ago during the Eocene.

 

The modern koala is the only extant member of Phascolarctidae, a family that includes several extinct genera and species. During the Oligocene and Miocene, koalas lived in rainforests and had more generalised diets. Some species, such as the Riversleigh rainforest koala (Nimiokoala greystanesi) and some species of Perikoala, were around the same size as the modern koala, while others, such as species of Litokoala, were one-half to two-thirds its size Like the modern species, prehistoric koalas had well developed ear structures which suggests that they also made long-distance vocalisations and had a relatively inactive lifestyle. During the Miocene, the Australian continent began drying out, leading to the decline of rainforests and the spread of open Eucalyptus woodlands. The genus Phascolarctos split from Litokoala in the late Miocene, and had several adaptations that allowed it to live on a specialised eucalyptus diet: a shifting of the palate towards the front of the skull; upper teeth lined by thicker bone, molars located relatively low compared the jaw joint and with more chewing surface; smaller pterygoid fossa; and a larger gap separating the incisor teeth and the molars.

 

P. cinereus may have emerged as a dwarf form of the giant koala (P. stirtoni), following the disappearance of several giant animals in the late Pleistocene. A 2008 study questions this hypothesis, noting that P. cinereus and P. stirtoni were sympatric during the middle to late Pleistocene, and the major difference in the morphology of their teeth. The fossil record of the modern koala extends back at least to the middle Pleistocene.

 

Molecular relationship between living Diprotodontia families based on Phillips and collages (2023)

Vombatidae (wombats)

Phascolarctidae (koalas)

Acrobatidae

Tarsipedidae (honey possum)

Petauridae (wrist-winged gliders and allies)

Pseudocheiridae (ringtail possums and allies)

Macropodidae (kangaroos, wallabies and allies)

Phalangeridae (brushtail possums and cuscuses)

Burramyidae (pygmy possums)

 

Morphology tree of Phascolarctidae based on Beck and collages (2020)

Thylacoleonidae (extinct marsupial lion and allies)

Vombatomorphia (wombats and fossil relatives)

Phascolarctidae

Priscakoala lucyturnbullae

Madakoala spp.

Perikoala robustus

Nimiokoala greystanesi

Litokoala dicksmithi

Litokoala kutjamarpensis

Phascolarctos cinereus

  

Genetics and variations

Three subspecies are recognised: the Queensland koala (Phascolarctos cinereus adustus, Thomas 1923), the New South Wales koala (Phascolarctos cinereus cinereus, Goldfuss 1817), and the Victorian koala (Phascolarctos cinereus victor, Troughton 1935). These forms are distinguished by pelage colour and thickness, body size, and skull shape. The Queensland koala is the smallest of the three, with silver or grey short hairs and a shorter skull. The Victorian koala is the largest, with shaggier, brown fur and a wider skull. The geographic limits of these variations are based on state borders, and their status as subspecies is disputed. A 1999 genetic study suggests koalas exist as a cline within a single evolutionarily significant unit with limited gene flow between local populations.

 

Other studies have found that koala populations have high levels of inbreeding and low genetic variation. Such low genetic diversity may have been caused by declines in the population during the late Pleistocene. Rivers and roads have been shown to limit gene flow and contribute to the isolation of southeast Queensland populations. In April 2013, scientists from the Australian Museum and Queensland University of Technology announced they had fully sequenced the koala genome.

 

Characteristics

The koala is a robust animal with a large head and vestigial or non-existent tail. It has a body length of 60–85 cm (24–33 in) and a weight of 4–15 kg (9–33 lb), making it among the largest arboreal marsupials. Koalas from Victoria are twice as heavy as those from Queensland.  The species is sexually dimorphic, with males 50% larger than females. Males are further distinguished from females by their more curved noses and the presence of chest glands, which are visible as bald patches.  The female's pouch opening is secured by a sphincter which holds the young in.

 

The pelage of the koala is denser on the back. The back fur colour varies from light grey to chocolate brown.  The belly fur is whitish; on the rump it is mottled whitish and dark. The koala has the most effective insulating back fur of any marsupial and is highly resilient to wind and rain, while the belly fur can reflect solar radiation. The koala's curved, sharp claws are well adapted for climbing trees. The large forepaws have two opposable digits (the first and second, which are opposable to the other three) that allow them to grip small branches. On the hind paws, the second and third digits are fused, a typical condition for members of the Diprotodontia, and the attached claws (which are still separate) function like a comb.  The animal has a robust skeleton and a short, muscular upper body with relatively long upper limbs that contribute to its ability to scale trees. In addition, the thigh muscles are anchored further down the shinbone, increasing its climbing power. 

 

For a mammal, the koala has a proportionally small brain,  being 60% smaller than that of a typical diprotodont, weighing only 19.2 g (0.68 oz) on average. The brain's surface is fairly smooth and "primitive".  It does not entirely fill up the cranial cavity, unlike in most mammals,  and is lightened by large amounts of cerebrospinal fluid. It is possible that the fluid protects the brain when animal falls from a tree.  The koala's small brain size may be an adaptation to the energy restrictions imposed by its diet, which is insufficient to sustain a larger brain. Because of its small brain, the koala has a limited ability to perform complex, unusual behaviours. For example, it will not eat plucked leaves on a flat surface, which conflicts with its normal feeding routine.

 

The koala has a broad, dark nose with a good sense of smell, and it is known to sniff the oils of individual branchlets to assess their edibility.  Its relatively small eyes are unusual among marsupials in that the pupils have vertical slits, an adaptation to living on a more vertical plane. Its round ears provide it with good hearing,  and it has a well-developed middle ear. The koala larynx is located relatively low in the vocal tract and can be pulled down even further. They also possess unique folds in the velum (soft palate), known as velar vocal folds, in addition to the typical vocal folds of the larynx. These features allow the koala to produce deeper sounds than would otherwise be possible for their size.

 

The koala has several adaptations for its poor, toxic and fibrous diet.  The animal's dentition consists of the incisors and cheek teeth (a single premolar and four molars on each jaw), which are separated by a large gap (a characteristic feature of herbivorous mammals). The koala bites a leaf with the incisors and clips it with the premolars at the petiole, before chewing it to pieces with the cusped molars.  Koalas may also store food in their cheek pouches before it is ready to be chewed. The partially worn molars of koalas in their prime are optimal for breaking the leaves into small particles, resulting in more efficient stomach digestion and nutrient absorption in the small intestine,  which digests the eucalyptus leaves to provide most of the animal's energy.  A koala sometimes regurgitates the food into the mouth to be chewed a second time.

 

Koalas are hindgut fermenters, and their digestive retention can last for up to 100 hours in the wild or up to 200 hours in captivity. This is made possible by their caecum—200 cm (80 in) long and 10 cm (4 in) in diameter—possibly the largest for an animal when accounting for its size.  Koalas can hold food particles for longer fermentation if needed. They are more likely keep smaller particles as larger ones take longer to digest.  While the hindgut is relatively large, only 10% of the animal's energy is obtained from digestion in this chamber. The koala's metabolic rate is only 50% of the typical mammalian rate, owing to its low energy intake,  although this can vary between seasons and sexes.  They can digest the toxic plant secondary metabolites, phenolic compounds and terpenes present in eucalyptus leaves due to their production of cytochrome P450, which breaks down these poisons in the liver. The koala replaces lost water at a lower rate than some other species like some possums.  It maintains water by absorbing it in the caecum, resulting in drier faecal pellets packed with undigested fibre. 

 

Distribution and habitat

The koala's geographic range covers roughly 1,000,000 km2 (390,000 sq mi), and 30 ecoregions. It ranges throughout mainland eastern and southeastern Australia, including the states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. The koala was also introduced to several nearby islands. The population on Magnetic Island represents the northern limit of its range.

 

Fossil evidence shows that the koala's range stretched as far west as southwestern Western Australia during the late Pleistocene. They were likely driven to extinction in these areas by environmental changes and hunting by Indigenous Australians.  Koalas were introduced to Western Australia at Yanchep in 2022. Koalas can be found in both tropical and temperate habitats ranging from dense woodlands to more spaced-out forests. In semi-arid climates, they prefer riparian habitats, where nearby streams and creeks provide refuge during times of drought and extreme heat.

 

Behaviour and ecology

Koalas are herbivorous, and while most of their diet consists of eucalypt leaves, they can be found in trees of other genera, such as Acacia, Allocasuarina, Callitris, Leptospermum, and Melaleuca. Though the foliage of over 600 species of Eucalyptus is available, the koala shows a strong preference for around 30. They prefer plant matter with higher protein over fibre and lignin.  The most favoured species are Eucalyptus microcorys, E. tereticornis, and E. camaldulensis, which, on average, make up more than 20% of their diet. Despite its reputation as a picky eater, the koala is more generalist than some other marsupial species, such as the greater glider. The koala does not need to drink often as it can get enough water in the eucalypt leaves,  though larger males may additionally drink water found on the ground or in tree hollows.  When feeding, a koala reaches out to grab leaves with one forepaw while the other paws hang on to the branch. Depending on the size of the individual, a koala can walk to the end of a branch or must stay near the base.  Each day, koalas eat up to 400 grams (14 oz) of leaves, spread over four to six feeding periods.  Despite their adaptations to a low-energy lifestyle, they have meagre fat reserves and need to feed often. 

 

Due to their low-energy diet, koalas limit their activity and sleep 20 hours a day. They are predominantly active at night and spend most of their waking hours foraging. They typically eat and sleep in the same tree, possibly for as long as a day.  On warm days, a koala may rest with its back against a branch or lie down with its limbs dangling.  When it gets very hot, the koala rests lower in the canopy and near the trunk, where the surface is cooler than the surrounding air. It curls up when it gets cold and wet.  A koala will find a lower, thicker branch on which to rest when it gets windy. While it spends most of the time in the tree, the animal descends to the ground to move to another tree, leaping along. The koala usually grooms itself with its hind paws, with their double claws, but sometimes uses its forepaws or mouth. 

 

Social life

Koalas are asocial animals and spend just 15 minutes a day on social behaviours. Where there are more koalas and fewer trees, home ranges are smaller and more clumped while the reverse is true for areas with fewer animals and more trees.  Koala society appears to consist of "residents" and "transients", the former being mostly adult females and the latter males. Resident males appear to be territorial and dominant. The territories of dominant males are found near breeding females, while younger males must wait until they reach full size to challenge for breeding rights.  Adult males occasionally venture outside their home ranges; when they do so, dominant ones retain their status.  As a male climbs a new tree, he rubs his chest against it and sometimes dribbles urine. This scent-marking behaviour probably serves as communication, and individuals are known to sniff the bottom of a newly found tree. Chest gland secretions are complex chemical mixtures — about 40 compounds were identified in one analysis — that vary in composition and concentration with the season and the age of the individual.

 

Adult males communicate with loud bellows — "a long series of deep, snoring inhalations and belching exhalations". Because of their low frequency, these bellows can travel far through the forest.  Koalas may bellow at any time of the year, particularly during the breeding season, when it serves to attract females and possibly intimidate other males. They also bellow to advertise their presence to their neighbours when they climb a different tree.  These sounds signal the male's actual body size, as well as exaggerate it; females pay more attention to bellows that originate from larger males. Female koalas bellow, though more softly, in addition to making snarls, wails, and screams. These calls are produced when in distress and when making defensive threats. Squeaking and sqawking are produced when distraught; the former is made by younger animals and the latter by older ones. When another individual climbs over it, a koala makes a low closed-mouth grunt. Koalas also communicate with facial expressions. When snarling, wailing, or squawking, the animal curls the upper lip and points its ears forward. Screaming koalas pull their lips and ears back. Females form an oval shape with their lips when annoyed.

 

Agonistic behaviour typically consists of quarrels between individuals that are trying to pass each other in the tree. This occasionally involves biting. Strangers may wrestle, chase, and bite each other. In extreme situations, a male may try to displace a smaller rival from a tree, chasing, cornering and biting it. Once the individual is driven away, the victor bellows and marks the tree.  Pregnant and lactating females are particularly aggressive and attack individuals that come too close. In general, however, koalas tend to avoid fighting due to energy costs. 

 

Reproduction and development

A young joey, preserved at Port Macquarie Koala Hospital

Koalas are seasonal breeders, and give birth from October to May. Females in oestrus lean their heads back and shake their bodies. Despite these obvious signals, males will try to copulate with any female during this period, mounting them from behind. Because of his much larger size, a male can overpower a female. A female may scream and vigorously fight off her suitors but will accede to one that is dominant or familiar. The commotion can attract other males to the scene, obliging the incumbent to delay mating and fight off the intruders. A female may learn who is more dominant during these fights. Older males usually have accumulated scratches, scars, and cuts on the exposed parts of their noses and their eyelids.

 

Koalas are induced ovulators. The gestation period lasts 33–35 days, and a female gives birth to one joey (although twins do occur). As marsupials, the young are born tiny and barely formed, weighing no more than 0.5 g (0.02 oz). However, their lips, forelimbs, and shoulders are relatively advanced, and they can breathe, defecate and urinate. The joey crawls into its mother's pouch to continue the rest of its development. Female koalas do not clean their pouches, an unusual trait among marsupials.

 

The joey latches on to one of the female's two teats and suckles it.  The female lactates for as long as a year to make up for her low energy production. Unlike in other marsupials, koala milk becomes less fatty as the joey grows in the pouch.  After seven weeks, the joey has a proportionally large head, clear edges around its face, more colouration, and a visible pouch (if female) or scrotum (male). At 13 weeks, the joey weighs around 50 g (1.8 oz) and its head is twice as big as before. The eyes begin to open and hair begins to appear. At 26 weeks, the fully furred animal resembles an adult and can look outside the pouch. 

  

Mother with joey on back

At six or seven months of age, the joey weighs 300–500 g (11–18 oz) and fully emerges from the pouch for the first time. It explores its new surroundings cautiously, clutching its mother for support.  Around this time, the mother prepares it for a eucalyptus diet by producing a faecal pap that the joey eats from her cloaca. This pap comes from the cecum, is more liquid than regular faeces, and is filled with bacteria. A nine month old joey has its adult coat colour and weighs 1 kg (2.2 lb). Having permanently left the pouch, it rides on its mother's back for transportation, learning to climb by grasping branches.  Gradually, it becomes more independent from its mother, who becomes pregnant again after a year, and the young is now around 2.5 kg (5.5 lb). Her bond with her previous offspring is permanently severed and she no longer allows it to suckle, but it will stay nearby until it is one-and-a-half to two years old. 

 

Females become sexually mature at about three years of age and can then become pregnant; in comparison, males reach sexual maturity when they are about four years old, although they can experience spermatogenesis as early as two years.  Males do not start marking their scent until they reach sexual maturity, though their chest glands become functional much earlier. Koalas can breed every year if environmental conditions are good, though the long dependence of the young usually leads to year-long gaps in births. 

 

Health and mortality

Koalas may live from 13 to 18 years in the wild. While female koalas usually live this long, males may die sooner because of their more risky lives.  Koalas usually survive falls from trees and can climb back up, but they can get hurt and even die, particularly inexperienced young and fighting males.  Around six years of age, the koala's chewing teeth begin to wear down and their chewing efficiency decreases. Eventually, the cusps disappear completely and the animal will die of starvation. Koalas have few predators. Dingos and large pythons and some birds of prey may take them. Koalas are generally not subject to external parasites, other than ticks around the coast. The mite Sarcoptes scabiei gives koalas mange, while the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans skin ulcers, but even these are uncommon. Internal parasites are few and have little effect.  These include the tapeworm Bertiella obesa, commonly found in the intestine, and the nematodes Marsupostrongylus longilarvatus and Durikainema phascolarcti, which are infrequently found in the lungs.[59] In a three-year study of almost 600 koalas taken to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland, 73.8% of the animals were infected with parasitic protozoal genus Trypanosoma, the most frequent of which was T. irwini.

 

Koalas can be subject to pathogens such as Chlamydiaceae bacteria,  which can cause keratoconjunctivitis, urinary tract infection, and reproductive tract infection.  Such infections are common on the mainland, but absent in some island populations.  The koala retrovirus (KoRV) may cause koala immune deficiency syndrome (KIDS) which is similar to AIDS in humans. Prevalence of KoRV in koala populations suggests a trend spreading from north to south, where populations go from being completely infected to being partially uninfected.

 

The animals are vulnerable to bushfires due to their slow speed and the flammability of eucalypt trees. The koala instinctively seeks refuge in the higher branches, where it is vulnerable to intense heat and flames. Bushfires also break up the animal's habitat, which isolates them, decreases their numbers and creates genetic bottlenecks. Dehydration and overheating can also prove fatal.  Consequently, the koala is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Models of climate change in Australia predict warmer and drier climates, suggesting that the koala's range will shrink in the east and south to more mesic habitats.

 

Human relations

The first written reference to the koala was recorded by John Price, servant of John Hunter, the Governor of New South Wales. Price encountered the "cullawine" on 26 January 1798, during an expedition to the Blue Mountains, but his remarks would first be published in Historical Records of Australia, nearly a century later. In 1802, French-born explorer Francis Louis Barrallier encountered the animal when his two Aboriginal guides, returning from a hunt, brought back two koala feet they were intending to eat. Barrallier preserved the appendages and sent them and his notes to Hunter's successor, Philip Gidley King, who forwarded them to Joseph Banks. Similar to Price, Barrallier's notes were not published until 1897.  Reports of the "Koolah" appeared in the Sydney Gazette in late 1803, and helped provide the impetus for King to send the artist John Lewin to paint watercolours of the animal. Lewin painted three pictures, one of which was used as a print in Georges Cuvier's Le Règne Animal (The Animal Kingdom) (1827).

 

Botanist Robert Brown was the first to write a formal scientific description of the koala in 1803, based on a female specimen captured near what is now Mount Kembla in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Austrian botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer drew the animal's skull, throat, feet, and paws. Brown's work remained unpublished and largely unnoticed, however, as his field books and notes remained in his possession until his death, when they were bequeathed to the British Museum (Natural History) in London. They were not identified until 1994, while Bauer's koala watercolours were not published until 1989.  William Paterson, who had befriended Brown and Bauer during their stay in New South Wales, wrote an eyewitness report of his encounters with the animals and this would be the basis for British surgeon Everard Home's anatomical writings on them.  Home, who in 1808 published his report in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, coined the scientific name Didelphis coola. 

 

George Perry would officially publish the first image of the koala in his 1810 natural history work Arcana.  Perry called it the "New Holland Sloth", and his dislike for the koala, evident in his description of the animal, was reflected in the contemporary British attitudes towards Australian animals as strange and primitive the eye is placed like that of the Sloth, very close to the mouth and nose, which gives it a clumsy awkward appearance, and void of elegance in the combination they have little either in their character or appearance to interest the Naturalist or Philosopher. As Nature however provides nothing in vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature.

  

Natural history illustrator John Gould popularised the koala with his 1863 work The Mammals of Australia.

Naturalist and popular artist John Gould illustrated and described the koala in his three-volume work The Mammals of Australia (1845–1863) and introduced the species, as well as other members of Australia's little-known faunal community, to the public. Comparative anatomist Richard Owen, in a series of publications on the physiology and anatomy of Australian mammals, presented a paper on the anatomy of the koala to the Zoological Society of London. In this widely cited publication, he provided an early description of its internal anatomy, and noted its general structural similarity to the wombat.  English naturalist George Robert Waterhouse, curator of the Zoological Society of London, was the first to correctly classify the koala as a marsupial in the 1840s, and compared it to fossil species Diprotodon and Nototherium, which had been discovered just recently.  Similarly, Gerard Krefft, curator of the Australian Museum in Sydney, noted evolutionary mechanisms at work when comparing the koala to fossil marsupials in his 1871 The Mammals of Australia.

 

Britain finally received a living koala in 1881, which was obtained by the Zoological Society of London. As related by prosecutor to the society, William Alexander Forbes, the animal suffered an accidental demise when the heavy lid of a washstand fell on it and it was unable to free itself. Forbes dissected the fresh specimen and wrote about the female reproductive system, the brain, and the liver — parts not previously described by Owen, who had access only to preserved specimens.  Scottish embryologist William Caldwell — well known in scientific circles for determining the reproductive mechanism of the platypus — described the uterine development of the koala in 1884, and used this new information to convincingly map out the evolutionary timeline of the koala and the monotremes. 

 

Main article: Koala emblems and popular culture

The koala is well known worldwide and is a major draw for Australian zoos and wildlife parks. It has been featured in popular culture and as soft toys.  It benefited the Australian tourism industry by over $1 billion in 1998, and this has subsequently grown. Its international popularly rose after World War II, when tourism to Australia increased and the animals were exported to zoos overseas.  In 1997, about 75% of European and Japanese tourists placed the koala at the top of their list of animals to see. According to biologist Stephen Jackson: "If you were to take a straw poll of the animal most closely associated with Australia, it's a fair bet that the koala would come out marginally in front of the kangaroo".  Factors that contribute to the koala's enduring popularity include its teddy bear-like appearance with childlike body proportions.

 

The koala is featured in the Dreamtime stories and mythology of Indigenous Australians. The Tharawal people believed that the animal helped them get to the continent by rowing the boat. Another myth tells of how a tribe killed a koala and used its long intestines to create a bridge for people from other parts of the world.  How the koala lost its tail has been the subject of many tales. In one, a kangaroo cuts it off to punish the koala for its uncouth behaviour.  Tribes in both Queensland and Victoria regarded the koala as a wise animal which gave valuable guidance. Bidjara-speaking people credited the koala for making trees grow in their arid lands.  The animal is also depicted in rock carvings, though less so than some other species.

 

Early European settlers in Australia considered the koala to be a creeping sloth-like animal with a "fierce and menacing look".  At the turn of the 20th century, the koala's reputation took a more positive turn. It appears in Ethel Pedley's 1899 book Dot and the Kangaroo, as the "funny native bear".  Artist Norman Lindsay depicted a more anthropomorphic koala in The Bulletin cartoons, starting in 1904. This character also appeared as Bunyip Bluegum in Lindsay's 1918 book The Magic Pudding. The most well known fictional koala is Blinky Bill. Created by Dorothy Wall in 1933, the character appeared in several books and has been the subject of films, TV series, merchandise, and a 1986 environmental song by John Williamson.  The koala first appeared on an Australian stamp in 1930.

The song "Ode to a Koala Bear" appears on the B-side of the 1983 Paul McCartney/Michael Jackson duet single Say Say Say.  A koala is the main character in Hanna-Barbera's The Kwicky Koala Show and Nippon Animation's Noozles, both of which were animated cartoons of the early 1980s. Food products shaped like the koala include the Caramello Koala chocolate bar and the bite-sized cookie snack Koala's March. Dadswells Bridge in Victoria features a tourist complex shaped like a giant koala  and the Queensland Reds rugby team has a koala as its icon.

 

Koala diplomacy

Several political leaders and members of royal families had their pictures taken with koalas, including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry, Crown Prince Naruhito, Crown Princess Masako, Pope John Paul II, US President Bill Clinton, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and South African President Nelson Mandela At the 2014 G20 Brisbane summit, hosted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, many world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama, were photographed holding koalas. The event gave rise to the term "koala diplomacy", which then became the Oxford Word of the Month for December 2016. The term also includes the loan of koalas by the Australian government to overseas zoos in countries such as Singapore and Japan, as a form of "soft power diplomacy", like the "panda diplomacy" practised by China.

 

Main article: Koala conservation

The koala was originally classified as Least Concern on the Red List, and reassessed as Vulnerable in 2014. In the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Queensland, the species was listed under the EPBC Act in February 2022 as endangered by extinction. The described population was determined in 2012 to be "a species for the purposes of the EPBC Act 1999" in Federal legislation.

 

Australian policymakers had declined a 2009 proposal to include the koala in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. A 2017 WWF report found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland, and a 26% decline in New South Wales. The koala population in South Australia and Victoria appear to be abundant; however, the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) argued that the exclusion of Victorian populations from protective measures was based on a misconception that the total koala population was 200,000, whereas they believed in 2012 that it was probably less than 100,000. AKF estimated in 2022 that there could be only 43,000–100,000.[80] This is compared with 8 to 10 million at the start of the 20th century. The Australian Government's Threatened Species Scientific Committee estimated that the 2021 koala population was 92,000, down from 185,000 two decades prior.

 

The koala was heavily hunted by European settlers in the early 20th century,  largely for its fur. Australia exported as many as two million pelts by 1924. Koala furs were used to make rugs, coat linings, muffs, and on women's garment trimmings. The first successful efforts at conserving the species were initiated by the establishment of Brisbane's Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and Sydney's Koala Park Sanctuary in the 1920s and 1930s. The owner of the latter park, Noel Burnet, created the first successful breeding program and earned a reputation as a top expert on the species.

 

One of the biggest anthropogenic threats to the koala is habitat destruction and fragmentation. Near the coast, the main cause of this is urbanisation, while in rural areas, habitat is cleared for agriculture. Its favoured trees are also taken down to be made into wood products.  In 2000, Australia had the fifth highest rate of land clearance globally, having removed 564,800 hectares (1,396,000 acres) of native plants.  The distribution of the koala has shrunk by more than 50% since European arrival, largely due to fragmentation of habitat in Queensland. Nevertheless, koalas live in many protected areas.

 

While urbanisation can pose a threat to koala populations, the animals can survive in urban areas provided enough trees are present. Urban populations have distinct vulnerabilities: collisions with vehicles and attacks by domestic dogs. Cars and dogs kill about 4,000 animals every year. To reduce road deaths, government agencies have been exploring various wildlife crossing options, such as the use of fencing to channel animals toward an underpass, in some cases adding a ledge as a walkway to an existing culvert. Injured koalas are often taken to wildlife hospitals and rehabilitation centres. In a 30-year retrospective study performed at a New South Wales koala rehabilitation centre, trauma was found to be the most frequent cause of admission, followed by symptoms of Chlamydia infection

6 Things to Know About Conception

90% of women don’t know that 2 days before through the day of ovulation is the best time to try to get pregnant.

 

40% of women don’t know that a woman is born with all of the eggs she will ever have.

 

The Science Behind Conception

Normal ovulation leaves only a small window for conception.

 

Conception can occur only in the 6 days before ovulation through the day of ovulation. Here’s what it takes for conception to occur:

 

Semen, which contains sperm, enters a woman’s vagina.

A mature egg cell arrives in a woman’s fallopian tube. The egg is fertilizable for only a short time (usually between 8 and 12 hours).

Sperm swim into the uterus and fallopian tubes, where they can stay functional for 5 days.

Sperm go through changes to become fully mature, so that they are able to bind to an egg.

In the fallopian tube, one sperm fertilizes the egg to form an embryo.

After several days, the developing embryo moves to the uterus. There, it attaches to the uterine lining, where the pregnancy can progress.

Women’s and men’s health conditions and behaviors, genetics, and age all influence the chance of conception. To learn more, visit go.usa.gov/8rZ3.

 

References

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, HHS. (2013). Preconception Care and Prenatal Care: Condition Information.

Lundsberg, L.S., Pal, L., Gariepy, A.M., Xu, X., Chu, M.C., Illuzzi, J.L. (2014) Knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding conception and fertility: a population-based survey among reproductive-age United States women. Fertility and Sterility, 101(3): 767-774.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health. (2009). Menstruation and the menstrual cycle fact sheet.

 

Credit: NICHD

www.nichd.nih.gov/news/resources/links/infographics/Pages...

A "pig" is the animal, "pork" is the meat. This actually goes back to the mixing of French and Anglo-Saxon words during the Norman Conquest of England. At that time, English acquired a lot of words from Latin-derived French words. "Pig" is derived from Anglo-Saxon, "Pork" from French and Latin.

Now, Words and Their Stories . On this program we often talk about the origins of words and expressions that we use in American English. We also talk about how we use them in everyday conversations. Today we talk about animals--and animals we eat. In English, these two categories often have different names. Pigs turn into pork. Cows turn into beef. Sheep is mutton. Calves are veal. And deer is venison. But why do we call these animals different names when we prepare them for a meal? Why is it “pig” on the farm but "pork" in a sandwich? The answer is the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066. That is when many French words became part of the English language. Many of those French words related to the battlefield, such as “army” and “royal.” Many related to government and taxation. When animals were in the stable or on the farm, they kept their Old English names: pig, cow, sheep and calf. But when they were cooked and brought to the table, an English version of the French word was used: pork (porc), beef (beouf), mutton (mouton) and veal (veau). On several websites, word experts claim that this change shows a class difference between the Anglo-Saxons and the French in Britain at the time of the conquest. Because the lower-class Anglo-Saxons were the hunters, they used the Old English names for animals. But the upper-class French saw these animals only at mealtimes. So, they used the French word to describe the prepared dishes. Today, modern English speakers — regardless of social class — have come to use both.

 

However, the words “deer" and "venison," however, are a bit more complicated.. Etymology Online says "venison" comes from an Old French word from the 1300s (venesoun) meaning "'meat of large game,' especially deer or boar." And that Old French word comes from a Latin word (venation) meaning "a hunt, hunting, or the chase." Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, any hunted animal was called venison after it was killed. And probably because deer were killed more than any other animal, “venison” came to mean “deer meat.” However, “chicken” and “fish” remain largely unchanged. However, sometimes we use the word "poultry" when talking about buying a chicken, turkey, or other similar bird to eat. For example, a grocery store may have a place called “the poultry section.” But we don't use "poultry" when we order chicken or turkey at a restaurant, or serve it at a meal. We simply say "chicken" or “turkey.” Chicken and waffles is a dish that comes from Southern U.S. It's a delicious mix of salty and sweet.

Chicken and waffles is a dish that comes from Southern U.S. It's a delicious mix of salty and sweet. For example, if I want to order my favorite dish, which is popular in the southern part of the United States, I will say, "I’ll have the chicken and waffles, please." I would never order "poultry and waffles." Lesser common birds, such as quail and pheasant, simply go by their own names. What about fish? The French word for "fish" is "poisson." Some word experts suspect that "poisson" is too close to the English word "poison" to become a common food word. After all, even the food-rich culture of France cannot overcome the fact that eating poison might kill you or at least make you sick. As a result, anything that even sounds like “poison” will probably be an unpopular choice at mealtime. And that bring us to the end of another Words and Their Stories. In your language, do the words for animals change when you eat them? Let us know in the Comments Section!

  

Anna Matteo wrote this story for VOA Learning English. Kelly Jean Kelly edited the story.

  

learningenglish.voanews.com/a/words-and-their-stories-pig...

 

The pig (Sus domesticus), also called swine (pl.: swine) or hog, is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is named the domestic pig when distinguishing it from other members of the genus Sus. Some authorities consider it a subspecies of Sus scrofa (the wild boar or Eurasian boar); other authorities consider it a distinct species. Pigs were domesticated in the Neolithic, both in China and in the Near East (around the Tigris Basin). When domesticated pigs arrived in Europe, they extensively interbred with wild boar but retained their domesticated features.

 

Pigs are farmed primarily for meat, called pork. The animal's skin or hide is used for leather. China is the world's largest pork producer, followed by the European Union and then the United States. Around 1.5 billion pigs are raised each year, producing some 120 million tonnes of meat, often cured as bacon. Some are kept as pets.

 

Pigs have featured in human culture since Neolithic times, appearing in art and literature for children and adults, and celebrated in cities such as Bologna for their meat products.

 

Description

The pig has a large head, with a long snout strengthened by a special prenasal bone and a disk of cartilage at the tip.[2] The snout is used to dig into the soil to find food and is an acute sense organ. The dental formula of adult pigs is

3.1.4.3

3.1.4.3

, giving a total of 44 teeth. The rear teeth are adapted for crushing. In males, the canine teeth can form tusks, which grow continuously and are sharpened by grinding against each other.[2] There are four hoofed toes on each foot; the two larger central toes bear most of the weight, while the outer two are also used in soft ground.[3] Most pigs have rather sparsely bristled hair on their skin, though there are some woolly-coated breeds such as the Mangalitsa.[4] Adult pigs generally weigh between 140 and 300 kg (310 and 660 lb), though some breeds can exceed this range. Exceptionally, a pig called Big Bill weighed 1,157 kg (2,551 lb) and had a shoulder height of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in).[5]

 

Pigs possess both apocrine and eccrine sweat glands, although the latter are limited to the snout.[6] Pigs, like other "hairless" mammals such as elephants, do not use thermal sweat glands in cooling.[7] Pigs are less able than many other mammals to dissipate heat from wet mucous membranes in the mouth by panting. Their thermoneutral zone is 16–22 °C (61–72 °F).[8] At higher temperatures, pigs lose heat by wallowing in mud or water via evaporative cooling, although it has been suggested that wallowing may serve other functions, such as protection from sunburn, ecto-parasite control, and scent-marking.[9] Pigs are among four mammalian species with mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom. Mongooses, honey badgers, hedgehogs, and pigs all have different modifications to the receptor pocket which prevents α-neurotoxin from binding.[10] Pigs have small lungs for their body size, and are thus more susceptible than other domesticated animals to fatal bronchitis and pneumonia.[11] The genome of the pig has been sequenced; it contains about 22,342 protein-coding genes.

Domestic pigs are related to other pig species as shown in the cladogram, based on phylogenetic analysis using mitochondrial DNA.

Taxonomy

The pig is most often considered to be a subspecies of the wild boar, which was given the name Sus scrofa by Carl Linnaeus in 1758; following from this, the formal name of the pig is Sus scrofa domesticus.[16][17] However, in 1777, Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben classified the pig as a separate species from the wild boar. He gave it the name Sus domesticus, still used by some taxonomists.[18] The American Society of Mammalogists considers it a separate species.[ The initial emergence of wild pigs, followed by the genetic divergence between boars and pigs and the domestication of pigs

Archaeological evidence shows that pigs were domesticated from wild boar in the Near East in or around the Tigris Basin,[21] being managed in a semi-wild state much as they are managed by some modern New Guineans.[22] There were pigs in Cyprus more than 11,400 years ago, introduced from the mainland, implying domestication in the adjacent mainland by then.[23] Pigs were separately domesticated in China, starting some 8,000 years ago.[24][25] In the Near East, pig husbandry spread for the next few millennia. It reduced gradually during the Bronze Age, as rural populations instead focused on commodity-producing livestock, but it was sustained in cities.[ Domestication did not involve reproductive isolation with population bottlenecks. Western Asian pigs were introduced into Europe, where they crossed with wild boar. There appears to have been interbreeding with a now extinct ghost population of wild pigs during the Pleistocene. The genomes of domestic pigs show strong selection for genes affecting behavior and morphology. Human selection for domestic traits likely counteracted the homogenizing effect of gene flow from wild boars and created domestication islands in the genome.[27][28] Pigs arrived in Europe from the Near East at least 8,500 years ago. Over the next 3,000 years they interbred with European wild boar until their genome showed less than 5% Near Eastern ancestry, yet retained their domesticated features.. DNA evidence from subfossil remains of teeth and jawbones of Neolithic pigs shows that the first domestic pigs in Europe were brought from the Near East. This stimulated the domestication of local European wild boar, resulting in a third domestication event with the Near Eastern genes dying out in European pig stock. More recently there have been complex exchanges, with European domesticated lines being exported, in turn, to the ancient Near East.[30][31] Historical records indicate that Asian pigs were again introduced into Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Among the animals that the Spanish introduced to the Chiloé Archipelago in the 16th century Columbian Exchange, pigs were the most successful in adapting to local conditions. The pigs benefited from abundant shellfish and algae exposed by the large tides of the archipelago. Pigs were brought to southeastern North America from Europe by de Soto and other early Spanish explorers. Escaped pigs became feral.[33]) arms and gone feral in many parts of the world. Feral pigs in the southeastern United States have migrated north to the Midwest, where many state agencies have programs to remove them.[34][35][36] Feral pigs in New Zealand and northern Queensland have caused substantial environmental damage.[37][38] Feral hybrids of the European wild boar with the domestic pig are disruptive to both environment and agriculture, as they destroy crops, spread animal diseases including foot-and-mouth disease, and consume wildlife such as juvenile seabirds and young tortoises.[39] Feral pig damage is especially an issue in southeastern South America

Female pigs reach sexual maturity at 3–12 months of age and come into estrus every 18–24 days if they are not successfully bred. The variation in ovulation rate can be attributed to intrinsic factors such as age and genotype, as well as extrinsic factors like nutrition, environment, and the supplementation of exogenous hormones. The gestation period averages 112–120 days. Estrus lasts two to three days, and the female's displayed receptiveness to mate is known as standing heat. Standing heat is a reflexive response that is stimulated when the female is in contact with the saliva of a sexually mature boar. Androstenol is one of the pheromones produced in the submaxillary salivary glands of boars that trigger the female's response.[43] The female cervix contains a series of five interdigitating pads, or folds, that hold the boar's corkscrew-shaped penis during copulation.[44] Females have bicornuate uteruses and two conceptuses must be present in both uterine horns to enable pregnancy to proceed.[45] The mother's body recognises that it is pregnant on days 11 to 12 of pregnancy, and is marked by the corpus luteum's producing the sex hormone progesterone.[46] To sustain the pregnancy, the embryo signals to the corpus luteum with the hormones estradiol and prostaglandin E2.[47] This signaling acts on both the endometrium and luteal tissue to prevent the regression of the corpus luteum by activation of genes that are responsible for corpus luteum maintenance.[48] During mid to late pregnancy, the corpus luteum relies primarily on luteinizing hormone for maintenance until birth.[ Archeological evidence indicates that medieval European pigs farrowed, or bore a litter of piglets, once per year.[49] By the nineteenth century, European piglets routinely double-farrowed, or bore two litters of piglets per year. It is unclear when this shift occurred.[50] Pigs have a maximum life span of about 27 years.

A characteristic of pigs which they share with carnivores is nest-building. Sows root in the ground to create depressions the size of their body, and then build nest mounds, using twigs and leaves, softer in the middle, in which to give birth. When the mound reaches the desired height, she places large branches, up to 2 metres in length, on the surface. She enters the mound and roots around to create a depression within the gathered material. She then gives birth in a lying position, unlike other artiodactyls which usually stand while birthing.[52]

 

Nest-building occurs during the last 24 hours before the onset of farrowing, and becomes most intense 12 to 6 hours before farrowing.[53] The sow separates from the group and seeks a suitable nest site with well-drained soil and shelter from rain and wind. This provides the offspring with shelter, comfort, and thermoregulation. The nest provides protection against weather and predators, while keeping the piglets close to the sow and away from the rest of the herd. This ensures they do not get trampled on, and prevents other piglets from stealing milk from the sow.[54] The onset of nest-building is triggered by a rise in prolactin level, caused by a decrease in progesterone and an increase in prostaglandin; the gathering of nest material seems to be regulated more by external stimuli such as temperature.[53]

 

Nursing and suckling

Pigs have complex nursing and suckling behaviour.[55] Nursing occurs every 50–60 minutes, and the sow requires stimulation from piglets before milk let-down. Sensory inputs (vocalisation, odours from mammary and birth fluids, and hair patterns of the sow) are particularly important immediately post-birth to facilitate teat location by the piglets.[56] Initially, the piglets compete for position at the udder; then the piglets massage around their respective teats with their snouts, during which time the sow grunts at slow, regular intervals. Each series of grunts varies in frequency, tone and magnitude, indicating the stages of nursing to the piglets.[57]

 

The phase of competition for teats and of nosing the udder lasts for about a minute, ending when milk begins to flow. The piglets then hold the teats in their mouths and suck with slow mouth movements (one per second), and the rate of the sow's grunting increases for approximately 20 seconds. The grunt peak in the third phase of suckling does not coincide with milk ejection, but rather the release of oxytocin from the pituitary into the bloodstream.[58] Phase four coincides with the period of main milk flow (10–20 seconds) when the piglets suddenly withdraw slightly from the udder and start sucking with rapid mouth movements of about three per second. The sow grunts rapidly, lower in tone and often in quick runs of three or four, during this phase. Finally, the flow stops and so does the grunting of the sow. The piglets may dart from teat to teat and recommence suckling with slow movements, or nosing the udder. Piglets massage and suckle the sow's teats after milk flow ceases as a way of letting the sow know their nutritional status. This helps her to regulate the amount of milk released from that teat in future sucklings. The more intense the post-feed massaging of a teat, the more milk that teat later releases.[59]

  

In pigs, dominance hierarchies are formed at an early age. Piglets are precocious, and attempt to suckle soon after being born. The piglets are born with sharp teeth and fight for the anterior teats, as these produce more milk. Once established, this teat order remains stable; each piglet tends to feed on a particular teat or group of teats.[52] Stimulation of the anterior teats appears to be important in causing milk letdown,[60] so it might be advantageous to the entire litter to have these teats occupied by healthy piglets. Piglets locate teats by sight and then by olfaction. Pig behaviour is intermediate between that of other artiodactyls and of carnivores.[52] Pigs seek out the company of other pigs and often huddle to maintain physical contact, but they do not naturally form large herds. They live in groups of about 8–10 adult sows, some young individuals, and some single males.[53] Pigs confined in a simplified, crowded, or uncomfortable environment may resort to tail-biting; farmers sometimes dock the tails of pigs to prevent the problem, or may enrich the environment with toys or other objects to reduce the risk.

 

Temperature control

Because of their relative lack of sweat glands, pigs often control their body temperature using behavioural thermoregulation. Wallowing, coating the body with mud, is a common behaviour.[9] They do not submerge completely under the mud, but vary the depth and duration of wallowing depending on environmental conditions.[9] Adult pigs start wallowing once the ambient temperature is around 17–21 °C (63–70 °F). They cover themselves in mud from head to tail.[9] They may use mud as a sunscreen, or to keep parasites away.[9] Most bristled pigs "blow their coat", meaning that they shed most of the longer, coarser stiff hair once a year, usually in spring or early summer, to prepare for the warmer months ahead.. Where pigs are allowed to roam freely, they walk roughly 4 km daily, scavenging within a home range of around a hectare. Farmers in Africa often choose such a low-input, free-range production system.

 

If conditions permit, pigs feed continuously for many hours and then sleep for many hours, in contrast to ruminants, which tend to feed for a short time and then sleep for a short time. Pigs are omnivorous and versatile in their feeding behaviour. They primarily eat leaves, stems, roots, fruits, and flowers. Rooting is an instinctual comforting behaviour in pigs characterized by nudging the snout into something. It first happens when piglets are born to obtain their mother's milk, and can become a habitual, obsessive behaviour, most prominent in animals weaned too early. Pigs root and dig into the ground to forage for food. Rooting is also a means of communication.[

 

Intelligence

 

Pigs are relatively intelligent animals, roughly on par with dogs. They distinguish each other as individuals, spend time in play, and form structured communities. They have good long-term memory and they experience emotions, changing their behaviour in response to the emotional states of other pigs. In terms of experimental tasks, pigs can perform tasks that require them to identify the locations of objects; they can solve mazes; and they can work with a simple language of symbols. They display self-recognition in a mirror. Pigs have been trained to associate different sorts of music (Bach and a military march) with food and social isolation respectively, and could communicate the resulting positive or negative emotion to untrained pigs.[69][70] Pigs can be trained to use a joystick with their snout to select a target on screen. A trained pig using its sensitive nose to assist the search for wild truffles in France

Pigs have panoramic vision of approximately 310° and binocular vision of 35° to 50°. It is thought they have no eye accommodation.[71] Other animals that have no accommodation, e.g. sheep, lift their heads to see distant objects.[72] The extent to which pigs have colour vision is still a source of some debate; however, the presence of cone cells in the retina with two distinct wavelength sensitivities (blue and green) suggests that at least some colour vision is present. Pigs have a well-developed sense of smell; this is exploited in Europe where trained pigs find underground truffles.[74] Pigs have 1,113 genes for smell receptors, compared to 1,094 in dogs; this may indicate an acute sense of smell, but against this, insects have only around 50 to 100 such genes but make extensive use of olfaction. Olfactory rather than visual stimuli are used in the identification of other pigs.[76] Hearing is well developed; sounds are localised by moving the head. Pigs use auditory stimuli extensively for communication in all social activities.[77] Alarm or aversive stimuli are transmitted to other pigs not only by auditory cues but also by pheromones.[ Similarly, recognition between the sow and her piglets is by olfactory and vocal cues. Trichinella spiralis larvae in uncooked pig meat. Pigs are subject to many pests and diseases which can seriously affect productivity and cause death. These include parasites such as Ascaris roundworms, virus diseases such as the tick-borne African Swine Fever, bacterial infections such as Clostridium, arthritis caused by Mycoplasma, and stillbirths caused by Parvovirus. Some parasites of pigs are a public health risk as they can be transmitted to humans in undercooked pork. These are the pork tapeworm Taenia solium; a protozoan, Toxoplasma gondii; and a nematode, Trichinella spiralis. Transmission can be prevented by thorough sanitation on the farm; by meat inspection and careful commercial processing; and by thorough cooking, or alternatively by sufficient freezing and curing.. Pigs have been raised outdoors, and sometimes allowed to forage in woods or pastures. In industrialized nations, pig production has largely switched to large-scale intensive pig farming. This has lowered production costs but has caused concern about possible cruelty. As consumers have become concerned with the humane treatment of livestock, demand for pasture-raised pork in these nations has increased.[82] Most pigs in the US receive ractopamine, a beta-agonist drug, which promotes muscle instead of fat and quicker weight gain, requiring less feed to reach finishing weight, and producing less manure. China has requested that pork exports be ractopamine-free.[83] With a population of around 1 billion individuals, the domesticated pig is one of the most numerous large mammals on the planet. Like all animals, pigs are susceptible to adverse impacts from climate change, such as heat stress from increased annual temperatures and more intense heatwaves. Heat stress has increased rapidly between 1981 and 2017 on pig farms in Europe. Installing a ground-coupled heat exchanger is an effective intervention. Pork is tied with chicken as the most commonly consumed meat worldwide. Pork is tied with chicken as the most commonly consumed meat worldwide Around 600 breeds of pig have been created by farmers around the world, mainly in Europe and Asia, differing in coloration, shape, and size.[87] According to The Livestock Conservancy, as of 2016, three breeds of pig are critically rare (having a global population of fewer than 2000). They are the Choctaw hog, the Mulefoot, and the Ossabaw Island hog.[88] The smallest known pig breed in the world is the Göttingen minipig, typically weighing about 26 kilograms (57 lb) as a healthy, full-grown adult. Given pigs are bred primarily as livestock and have not been bred as companion animals for very long, selective breeding for a placid or biddable temperament is not well established. Pigs have radically different psychology and behaviours compared to dogs, and exhibit fight-or-flight instincts, an independent nature, and natural assertiveness.[90] Male and female swine that have not been de-sexed may express unwanted aggressive behavior, and are prone to serious health issues.[ The pork belly futures contract became an icon of commodities trading. It appears in depictions of the arena in popular entertainment, such as the 1983 film Trading Places.[93] Trade in pork bellies declined, and they were delisted from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2011. In 2023, China produced more pork than any other country, 55 million tonnes, followed by the European Union with 22.8 million tonnes and the United States with 12.5 million tonnes. Global production in 2023 was 120 million tonnes. India, despite its large population, consumed under 0.3 million tonnes of pork in 2023.[96] International trade in pork (meat not consumed in the producing country) reached 13 million tonnes in 2020. Pigs are farmed primarily for meat, called pork. Pork is eaten in the form of pork chops, loin or rib roasts, shoulder joints, steaks, and loin (also called fillet). The many meat products made from pork include ham, bacon (mainly from the back and belly), and sausages.[98] Pork is further made into charcuterie products such as terrines, galantines, pâtés and confits.[99] Some sausages such as salami are fermented and air-dried, to be eaten raw. There are many types, the original Italian varieties including Genovese, Milanese, and Cacciatorino, with spicier kinds from the South of Italy including Calabrese, Napoletano, and Peperone. The hide is made into pigskin leather, which is soft and durable; it can be brushed to form suede leather. These are used for products such as gloves, wallets, suede shoes, and leather jackets.[101] In the 16th century, pig skin was the most popular book-binding material in Germany, though calf skin was more common elsewhere. Salami, a fermented and air-dried sausage, originally made in Italy Salami, a fermented and air-dried sausage, originally made in Italy . The growth in publication of medical research papers using pigs and miniature pigs, and the research done on miniature pigs by organ system[

Pigs, both as live animals and as a source of post-mortem tissues, are valuable animal models because of their biological, physiological, and anatomical similarities to human beings. For instance, human skin is very similar to the pigskin, therefore pigskin has been used in many preclinical studies.[104][105]

Pigs are good non-human candidates for organ donation to humans, and in 2021 became the first animal to successfully donate an organ to a human body. The procedure used a donor pig genetically engineered not to have a specific carbohydrate that the human body considers a threat–Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose.[108] Pigs are good for human donation as the risk of cross-species disease transmission is reduced by the considerable phylogenetic distance from humans.[109] They are readily available, and the danger of creating new human diseases is low as domesticated pigs have been in close contact with humans for thousands of years. Pig farms can serve as reservoirs of viral diseases that are dangerous to humans and so contribute to their outbreaks in human populations.[111] The 2009 swine flu pandemic was caused by an influenza A variant which had first emerged in pigs.[112] Pigs were also essential to the first outbreak of the Nipah virus in 1999, with 93% of the infected humans having had contact with pigs.[111] While Japanese encephalitis is primarily spread by mosquitoes, pigs are a known intermediary host.[113] There is also a potential for porcine coronaviruses such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus or swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus to spill over into human populations.[As with the other forms of meat, producing pork is more energy-intensive than plant-based foods, and it is associated with more greenhouse gas emissions per calorie. However, emissions from pork are many times smaller than those of beef, veal and mutton, though larger than of chicken meat. Intensive pig production is also associated with water pollution concerns, as the swine waste is often stored above ground in so-called lagoons. These lagoons typically have high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, and can contain toxic heavy metals like zinc and copper, microbial pathogens, or hold elevated concentrations of pharmaceuticals from subtherapeutic antibiotic use in swine.[115] This wastewater from lagoons is liable to reach groundwater on farms, though there is little evidence for it reaching deeper into local drinking water supplies.[116] However, lagoon spills, such as from heavy rains in the wake of a hurricane, can lead to fish kills and algal blooms in local rivers.[115] In the United States, 35,000 mi (56,000 km) of river across over 20 states were estimated to have been contaminated by manure leakage as of 2015.[117] There is also evidence that evaporation from lagoons can cause nitrogen and phosphorus to spread through the air as dry particles then reach other water basins when they fall out through dry deposition. This process then also contributes to water eutrophication.[

Intensive pig production involves practices such as castration, earmarking, tattooing for litter identification, tail docking, which are often done without the use of anesthetic. Painful teeth clipping of piglets is also done to curtail cannibalism, behavioural instability and aggression, and tail biting, which are induced by the cramped environment.in English indoor farming, young pigs (less than 110kg in weight) are allowed to be kept with less than one square meter of space per pig. Pigs often begin life in a farrowing or gestation crate, which is a small pen with a central cage, designed to allow the piglets to feed from their mother while preventing her from attacking or crushing them.[123] The crates are so small that the mother sows cannot turn around. While wild piglets remain with their mothers for around 12 to 14 weeks, farmed piglets are weaned and removed from their mothers at between two and five weeks old. Of the piglets born alive, 10% to 18% will not reach weaning age, instead succumbing to disease, starvation, dehydration, or accidental crushing by their mothers Unusually small runt piglets are typically killed immediately by staff through blunt trauma to the head Further, intensive farming involves sows giving birth to large litter sizes at an unnatural frequency, which increases the rate of stillborn piglets, and causes as many as 25%-50% of sows to die of prolapse. Pigs, widespread in societies around the world since Neolithic times, have been used for many purposes in art, literature, and other expressions of human culture. In classical times, the Romans considered pork the finest of meats, enjoying sausages, and depicting them in their art Across Europe, pigs have been celebrated in carnivals since the Middle Ages, becoming specially important in Medieval Germany in cities such as Nuremberg,[ and in Early Modern Italy in cities such as Bologna. Pigs, especially miniature breeds, are occasionally kept as pets. In literature, both for children[140] and adults, pig characters appear in allegories, comic stories, and serious novels.In art, pigs have been represented in a wide range of media and styles from the earliest times in many cultures.[143] Pig names are used in idioms and animal epithets, often derogatory, since pigs have long been linked with dirtiness and greed,[while places such as Swindon are named for their association with swine.[The eating of pork is forbidden in Islam and Judaism, but pigs are sacred in some other religions.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig#Pests_and_diseases

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The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.

 

Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.

 

Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.

 

The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.

 

Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.

 

The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.

 

The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.

 

TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS

The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.

 

Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.

 

HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY

The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).

 

Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.

 

In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or

 

P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.

 

GENOMICS

The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.

 

The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.

 

Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.

 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.

 

Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.

 

Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.

 

Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.

 

DIET

Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.

 

A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.

 

Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.

 

Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.

 

SOCIAL LIFE

Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.

 

Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.

 

During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.

 

Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.

 

COMMUNICATION

Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.

 

NESTING

Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.

 

Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.

 

REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING

Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.

 

Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.

 

Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.

 

Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.

 

Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.

 

When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.

 

INTELLIGENCE

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.

 

A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.

 

TOOL USE AND CULTURE

Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).

 

Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.

 

Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.

 

In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.

 

POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES

A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.

 

During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.

 

ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS

Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.

 

Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.

 

Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.

 

Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.

 

A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.

 

A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.

 

LEGAL STATUS

In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.

 

CONSERVATION

CONSERVATION STATUS

The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

 

The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.

 

Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.

 

Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.

 

During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.

 

Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.

 

CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS

A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.

 

Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.

 

Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Cheetah. Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park/ Kalahari Desert. South Africa. Nov/2019

 

Cheetah

The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus; /ˈtʃiːtə/) is a large cat of the subfamily Felinae that occurs in North, Southern and East Africa, and a few localities in Iran. It inhabits a variety of mostly arid habitats like dry forests, scrub forests, and savannahs. The species is IUCN Red Listed as Vulnerable, as it suffered a substantial decline in its historic range in the 20th century due to habitat loss, poaching for the illegal pet trade, and conflict with humans. By 2016, the global cheetah population has been estimated at approximately 7,100 individuals in the wild. Several African countries have taken steps to improve cheetah conservation measures.

The cheetah was formally described by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1775 and is the only extant member of the genus Acinonyx. Its yellowish tan or rufous to greyish white coat is uniformly covered with nearly 2,000 solid black spots. Its body is slender with a small rounded head, black tear-like streaks on the face, deep chest, long thin legs and long spotted tail. It reaches 70–90 cm (28–35 in) at the shoulder, and weighs 21–72 kg (46–159 lb).

The cheetah breeds throughout the year, and is an induced ovulator. Gestation lasts nearly three months, resulting in a litter of typically three to five, in rare cases up to eight cubs. They are weaned at the age of about six months. After siblings become independent from their mother, they usually stay together for some time. It is active mainly during the day, with hunting its major activity. It is a carnivore and preys mainly upon antelopes. It stalks its prey to within 100–300 m (330–980 ft), charge towards it and kill it by tripping it during the chase and biting its throat to suffocate it to death. Female cheetahs are solitary or live with their offspring in home ranges. Adult males are sociable despite their territoriality, forming groups called coalitions.

African cheetahs may achieve successful hunts only running up to a speed of 64 km/h (40 mph) while hunting due to their exceptional ability to accelerate; but are capable of accelerating up to 112 km/h (70 mph) on short distances of 100 m (330 ft). It is therefore the fastest land animal. Because of its prowess at hunting, the cheetah was tamed as early as the 16th century BC in Egypt to kill game at hunts. Cheetahs have been widely depicted in art, literature, advertising and animation.

Source: Wikipedia

Guepardo pu Chita

O guepardo ou chita (Acinonyx jubatus) é um animal da família dos felídeos (Felidae), ainda que de comportamento atípico, se comparado com outros da mesma família. É a única espécie vivente do gênero Acinonyx. Tendo como habitat a savana, vive na África, península Arábica e no sudoeste da Ásia. Também é conhecido pelos nomes de cheetah, cheetah-africana, lobo-tigre, leopardo-caçador ou onça-africana. Fisicamente, o guepardo ou chita é significativamente parecido com o leopardo. As almofadas das patas da chita têm ranhuras para se moverem melhor em alta velocidade, e sua longa cauda serve para lhe dar estabilidade nas curvas em alta velocidade. Cada chita pode ser identificada pelo padrão exclusivo de anéis existentes em sua cauda, tem uma cabeça pequena e aerodinâmica e uma coluna incrivelmente flexível, são habilidades que ajudam bastante na hora da perseguição.

É um animal predador, preferindo uma estratégia simples: caçar as suas presas através de perseguições a alta velocidade, em vez de táticas como a caça por emboscada ou em grupo, mas por vezes, pode caçar em dupla. Consegue atingir velocidades de 115 km/h, por curtos períodos de cada vez (até 500 metros de corrida), sendo o mais rápido de todos os animais terrestres.

 

Fonte: Wikipedia

  

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is a large wildlife preserve and conservation area in southern Africa. The park straddles the border between South Africa and Botswana and comprises two adjoining national parks:

•Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in South Africa

•Gemsbok National Park in Botswana

The total area of the park is 38,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi). Approximately three-quarters of the park lies in Botswana and one-quarter in South Africa. Kgalagadi means "place of thirst." [1] In September 2014, more than half of the Botswana portion of the park was sold for gas-fracking

 

The park is located largely within the southern Kalahari Desert. The terrain consists of red sand dunes, sparse vegetation, occasional trees, and the dry riverbeds of the Nossob and Auob Rivers. The rivers are said to flow only about once per century. However, water flows underground and provides life for grass and camelthorn trees growing in the river beds. The rivers may flow briefly after large thunderstorms

Source: Wikpedia

 

Kalahari Desert

 

The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savanna in Southern Africa extending for 900,000 square kilometres (350,000 sq mi), covering much of Botswana, parts of Namibia and regions of South Africa.

It is not to be confused with the Angolan, Namibian and South African Namib coastal desert, whose name is of Khoekhoegowab origin and means "vast place"

Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning "the great thirst", or Kgalagadi, meaning "a waterless place"; the Kalahari has vast areas covered by red sand without any permanent surface water

Source: Wikpedia

 

Parque Transfronteiriço do Kgalagadi

O Parque Transfronteiriço de Kgalagadi é uma grande área de preservação e conservação da vida selvagem no sul da África. O parque fica na fronteira entre a África do Sul e o Botsuana e compreende dois parques nacionais adjacentes:

• Parque Nacional Kalahari Gemsbok na África do Sul

• Parque Nacional Gemsbok no Botsuana

A área total do parque é de 38.000 quilômetros quadrados (15.000 milhas quadradas). Aproximadamente três quartos do parque ficam no Botsuana e um quarto na África do Sul. Kgalagadi significa "lugar de sede". Em setembro de 2014, mais da metade da parte do parque em Botsuana foi vendida por fracking a gás

 

O parque está localizado em grande parte no sul do deserto de Kalahari. O terreno consiste em dunas de areia vermelha, vegetação escassa, árvores ocasionais e leitos secos dos rios Nossob e Auob. Diz-se que os rios fluem apenas uma vez por século. No entanto, a água flui no subsolo e fornece vida para as árvores que crescem nos leitos dos rios. Os rios podem fluir brevemente após grandes tempestades

Fonte: Wikipedia (tradução livre)

 

Deserto do Kalahari

 

O Kalahari, Calaari ou Calaári é um deserto localizado na África Austral, com cerca de 900.000 km² abrangendo partes de Angola, do Botswana, Namíbia e África do Sul.

O nome é derivado de uma palavra em tsuana[2] e significa "a grande sede"

Derivada da palavra Kgalagadi, significa o lugar da a grande sede (kgala - sede; gadi - lugar). A formação do deserto é devida, principalmente, a corrente marítima fria de Benguela, que atua na costa sudoeste da África, condensando o vapor de água que vai em direção ao continente, fazendo com que as massas de ar cheguem mais secas ao mesmo. O Kalahari possui vasta área coberta por areia avermelhada sem afloramento de água em caráter permanente. Porém Kalahari não é um deserto verdadeiro. Partes dele recebem mais de 250 mm de chuva mal distribuída anualmente e possuem bastante vegetação. É realmente árido somente no sudoeste (menos de 175 mm de chuva ao ano), fazendo do Kalahari um deserto de fósseis. As temperaturas no verão do Kalahari vão de 20 a 40°C. No inverno, o Kalahari tem um clima seco e frio com geada à noite. As baixas temperaturas do inverno podem ficar abaixo de 0°C. O clima no verão em algumas regiões do Kalahari pode alcançar 50°C (por isso algumas tribos bosquimanas se recolhem nos momentos mais quentes do dia).

Fonte: Wikipedia

 

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Lower power shows the pointer just inside the stratum functionalis. I meant to have it at the edge of the stratum basalis to indicate what would remain after menses. The myometrium smooth muscle is clear in this view.

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Hippopotamuses love water, which is why the Greeks named them the "river horse." Hippos spend up to 16 hours a day submerged in rivers and lakes to keep their massive bodies cool under the hot African sun. Hippos are graceful in water, good swimmers, and can hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes. However, they are often large enough to simply walk or stand on the lake floor, or lie in the shallows. Their eyes and nostrils are located high on their heads, which allows them to see and breathe while mostly submerged. Hippos also bask on the shoreline and secrete an oily red substance, which gave rise to the myth that they sweat blood. The liquid is actually a skin moistener and sunblock that may also provide protection against germs. At sunset, hippopotamuses leave the water and travel overland to graze. They may travel 6 miles (10 kilometers) in a night, along single-file pathways, to consume some 80 pounds (35 kilograms) of grass. Considering their enormous size, a hippo's food intake is relatively low. If threatened on land hippos may run for the water—they can match a human's speed for short distances. Hippo calves weigh nearly 100 pounds (45 kilograms) at birth and can suckle on land or underwater by closing their ears and nostrils. Each female has only one calf every two years. Soon after birth, mother and young join schools that provide some protection against crocodiles, lions, and hyenas. Hippos once had a broader distribution but now live in eastern central and southern sub-Saharan Africa, where their populations are in decline. A partially submerged hippopotamus tries to keep cool in the hot African sun. The hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος), is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae (the other is the Pygmy Hippopotamus.) After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, their closest living relatives are cetaceans (whales, porpoises, etc.) from which they diverged about 55 million years ago. The common ancestor of whales and hippos split from other even-toed ungulates around 60 million years ago. The earliest known hippopotamus fossils, belonging to the genus Kenyapotamus in Africa, date to around 16 million years ago.

The hippopotamus is semi-aquatic, inhabiting rivers, lakes and mangrove swamps, where territorial bulls preside over a stretch of river and groups of 5 to 30 females and young. During the day they remain cool by staying in the water or mud; reproduction and childbirth both occur in water. They emerge at dusk to graze on grass. While hippopotamuses rest near each other in the water, grazing is a solitary activity and hippos are not territorial on land. Hippos are recognizable by their barrel-shaped torso, enormous mouth and teeth, nearly hairless body, stubby legs and tremendous size. It is the third largest land mammal by weight (between 1½ and 3 tonnes), behind the white rhinoceros (1½ to 3½ tonnes) and the three species of elephant (3 to 9 tonnes). The hippopotamus is one of the largest quadrupeds and despite its stocky shape and short legs, it can easily outrun a human. Hippos have been clocked at 30 km/h (19 mph) over short distances. The hippopotamus is one of the most aggressive creatures in the world and is often regarded as one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. They are still threatened by habitat loss and poaching for their meat and ivory canine teeth. There is also a colony of non-zoo hippos in Colombia introduced by Pablo Escobar. The most recent theory of the origins of Hippopotamidae suggests that hippos and whales shared a common semi-aquatic ancestor that branched off from other artiodactyls around 60 million years ago.[13][15] This hypothesized ancestral group likely split into two branches around 54 million years ago.[12] One branch would evolve into cetaceans, possibly beginning about 52 million years ago with the proto-whale Pakicetus and other early whale ancestors collectively known as Archaeoceti, which eventually underwent aquatic adaptation into the completely aquatic cetaceans.[17] The other branch became the anthracotheres, a large family of four-legged beasts, the earliest of whom in the late Eocene would have resembled skinny hippopotamuses with comparatively small and narrow heads. All branches of the anthracotheres, except that which evolved into Hippopotamidae, became extinct during the Pliocene without leaving any descendants.[15]

A rough evolutionary lineage can be traced from Eocene and Oligocene species: Anthracotherium and Elomeryx to the Miocene Merycopotamus and Libycosaurus and the very latest anthracotheres in the Pliocene.[18] Merycopotamus, Libycosaurus and all hippopotamids can be considered to form a clade, with Libycosaurus being more closely related to hippos. Their common ancestor would have lived in the Miocene, about 20 million years ago. Hippopotamids are therefore deeply nested within the family Anthracotheriidae. The Hippopotamidae are believed to have evolved in Africa; the oldest known hippopotamid is the genus Kenyapotamus which lived in Africa from 16 to 8 million years ago. While hippopotamid species spread across Asia and Europe, no hippopotamuses have ever been discovered in the Americas, although various anthracothere genera emigrated into North America during the early Oligocene. From 7.5 to 1.8 million years ago an ancestor to the modern hippopotamus, Archaeopotamus, lived in Africa and the Middle East.[19]

While the fossil record of hippos is still poorly understood, the two modern genera, Hippopotamus and Choeropsis (sometimes Hexaprotodon), may have diverged as far back as 8 million years ago. Taxonomists disagree whether or not the modern Pygmy Hippopotamus is a member of Hexaprotodon —an apparently paraphyletic genus also embracing many extinct Asian hippopotamuses that is more closely related to Hippopotamus, or Choeropsis —an older and basal genus.[18][19]

[edit]Extinct species

Three species of Malagasy Hippopotamus became extinct during the Holocene on Madagascar, one of them within the past 1,000 years. The Malagasy Hippos were smaller than the modern hippopotamus, likely through the process of insular dwarfism.[20] There is fossil evidence that many Malagasy Hippos were hunted by humans, a likely factor in their eventual extinction.[20] Isolated members of Malagasy Hippopotamus may have survived in remote pockets; in 1976, villagers described a living animal called the Kilopilopitsofy, which may have been a Malagasy Hippopotamus.[21]

Two species of Hippopotamus, the European Hippopotamus (H. antiquus) and H. gorgops ranged throughout continental Europe and the British Isles. Both species became extinct before the last glaciation. Ancestors of European Hippos found their way to many islands of the Mediterranean during the Pleistocene.[22] Both species were larger than the modern hippopotamus, averaging about 1 meter (3.3 feet) longer. The Pleistocene also saw a number of dwarf species evolve on several Mediterranean islands including Crete (H. creutzburgi), Cyprus (H. minor), Malta (H. melitensis) and Sicily (H. pentlandi). Of these, the Cyprus Dwarf Hippopotamus, survived until the end of the Pleistocene or early Holocene. Evidence from an archaeological site Aetokremnos, continues to cause debate on whether or not the species was encountered, and was driven to extinction, by man. Hippopotamuses are among the largest living mammals; only elephants and some rhinoceroses and whales are heavier. They can live in the water or on land. Their specific gravity allows them to sink and walk or run along the bottom of a river. Hippos are considered megafauna, but unlike all other African megafauna, hippos have adapted for a semi-aquatic life in freshwater lakes and rivers.[9]:3 A hippo's lifespan is typically 40–50 years.[6]:277 Donna the Hippo, 60, was the oldest living hippo in captivity. She lived at the Mesker Park Zoo in Evansville, Indiana, USA[24][25] until her death on August 1, 2012. The oldest hippo ever recorded was called Tanga; she lived in Munich, Germany, and died in 1995 at the age of 61.[26]

Because of their enormous size, hippopotamuses are difficult to weigh in the wild. Most estimates of the weight come from culling operations that were carried out in the 1960s. The average weights for adult males ranged between 1,500–1,800 kg (3,300–4,000 lb). Females are smaller than their male counterparts, with average weights measuring between 1,300–1,500 kg (2,900–3,300 lb).[9]:12 Older males can get much larger, reaching at least 3,200 kg (7,100 lb) with a few exceptional specimens exceeding 3,600 kg (7,900 lb).[27][28] The heaviest known hippopotamus weighed approximately 4,500 kg (9,900 lb).[29] Male hippos appear to continue growing throughout their lives; females reach a maximum weight at around age 25.[30]

Hippos measure 3.3 to 5.2 meters (11 to 17 ft) long, including a tail of about 56 centimeters (22 in) in length and average about 1.5 meters (5 ft) tall at the shoulder.[31][32] The range of hippopotamus sizes overlaps with the range of the white rhinoceros; use of different metrics makes it unclear which is the largest land animal after elephants. Even though they are bulky animals, hippopotamuses can run faster than a human on land. Estimates of their running speed vary from 30 km/h (18 mph) to 40 km/h (25 mph), or even 50 km/h (30 mph). The hippo can maintain these higher speeds for only a few hundred meters. Despite being semi-aquatic and having webbed feet, an adult hippo is not a particularly good swimmer nor can it float. It is rarely found in deep water; when it is, the animal moves by porpoise-like leaps from the bottom. The eyes, ears, and nostrils of hippos are placed high on the roof of the skull. This allows them to be in the water with most of their body submerged in the waters and mud of tropical rivers to stay cool and prevent sunburn. Their skeletal structure is graviportal, adapted to carrying the animals' enormous weight. Hippopotamuses have small legs (relative to other megafauna) because the water in which they live reduces the weight burden. Unlike most other semi-aquatic animals, the hippopotamus has very little hair.[6]:260 The skin is 6 in (15 cm) thick,[33] providing it great protection against conspecifics and predators. The animals's upper parts are purplish-gray to blue-black while the under parts and areas around the eyes and ears can be brownish-pink.[6]:260 The testes of the males descend only partially and a scrotum is not present. In addition, the penis retracts into the body when not erect. The genitals of the female are unusual in that the vagina is ridged and two large diverticula protrude from the vulval vestibule. The function of these is unknown.[9]:28–29

The hippo's jaw is powered by a large masseter and a well developed digastric; the latter loops up behind the former to the hyoid.[6]:259 The jaw hinge is located far back enough to allow the animal to open its mouth at almost 180°.[9]:17 On the National Geographic Channel television program, "Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr", Dr. Brady Barr measured the bite force of an adult female hippo at 8100 N (1821 lbf); Barr also attempted to measure the bite pressure of an adult male hippo, but had to abandon the attempt due to the male's aggressiveness.[34] Hippopotamus teeth sharpen themselves as they grind together. The lower canines and lower incisors are enlarged, especially in males, and grow continuously. The incisors can reach 40 cm (16 in) while the canines reach up to 50 cm (20 in).[33]

Their skin secretes a natural sunscreen substance which is red-colored. The secretion is sometimes referred to as "blood sweat," but is neither blood nor sweat. This secretion is initially colorless and turns red-orange within minutes, eventually becoming brown. Two distinct pigments have been identified in the secretions, one red (hipposudoric acid) and one orange (norhipposudoric acid). The two pigments are highly acidic compounds. Both pigments inhibit the growth of disease-causing bacteria; as well, the light absorption of both pigments peaks in the ultraviolet range, creating a sunscreen effect. All hippos, even those with different diets, secrete the pigments, so it does not appear that food is the source of the pigments. Instead, the animals may synthesize the pigments from precursors such as the amino acid tyrosine. Hippopotamus amphibius was widespread in North Africa and Europe during the Eemian[36] and late Pleistocene until about 30,000 years ago. The species was common in Egypt's Nile region during antiquity but has since been extirpated. Pliny the Elder writes that, in his time, the best location in Egypt for capturing this animal was in the Saite nome;[37] the animal could still be found along the Damietta branch after the Arab Conquest in 639. Hippos are still found in the rivers and lakes of the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, north through to Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, west from Ghana to Gambia, and also in Southern Africa (Botswana, Republic of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique). Genetic evidence suggests that common hippos in Africa experienced a marked population expansion during or after the Pleistocene Epoch, attributed to an increase in water bodies at the end of the era. These findings have important conservation implications as hippo populations across the continent are currently threatened by loss of access to fresh water.[10] Hippos are also subject to unregulated hunting and poaching. In May 2006 the hippopotamus was identified as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List drawn up by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), with an estimated population of between 125,000 and 150,000 hippos, a decline of between 7% and 20% since the IUCN's 1996 study. Zambia (40,000) and Tanzania (20,000–30,000) possess the largest populations.[1]

The hippo population declined most dramatically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[38] The population in Virunga National Park had dropped to 800 or 900 from around 29,000 in the mid 1970s.[39] The decline is attributed to the disruptions caused by the Second Congo War.[39] The poachers are believed to be former Hutu rebels, poorly paid Congolese soldiers, and local militia groups.[39] Reasons for poaching include the belief that hippos are harmful to society, and also for money.[40] The sale of hippo meat is illegal, but black-market sales are difficult for Virunga National Park officers to track. Invasive potential

In the late 1980s, Pablo Escobar kept four hippos in a private menagerie at his residence in Hacienda Napoles, 100 km east of Medellín, Colombia, after buying them in New Orleans. They were deemed too difficult to seize and move after Escobar's fall, and hence left on the untended estate. By 2007, the animals had multiplied to 16 and had taken to roaming the area for food in the nearby Magdalena River.[41] In 2009, two adults and one calf escaped the herd, and after attacking humans and killing cattle, one of the adults (called "Pepe") was killed by hunters under authorization of the local authorities.[42][43] It is unknown what kind of effects the presence of hippos might have on the ecosystem in Colombia. According to experts interviewed by W Radio Colombia, the animals could survive in the Colombian jungles. It is believed that the lack of control from the Colombian government, which is not used to dealing with this species, could result in human fatalities. Hippos spend most of their days wallowing in the water or the mud, with the other members of their pod. The water serves to keep their body temperature down, and to keep their skin from drying out. With the exception of eating, most of hippopotamuses' lives —from childbirth, fighting with other hippos, to reproduction— occur in the water. Hippos leave the water at dusk and travel inland, sometimes up to 8 kilometers (5 mi), to graze on short grass, their main source of food. They spend four to five hours grazing and can consume 68 kilograms (150 lb) of grass each night.[44] Like almost any herbivore, they will consume many other plants if presented with them, but their diet in nature consists almost entirely of grass, with only minimal consumption of aquatic plants.[45] Hippos have (rarely) been filmed eating carrion, usually close to the water. There are other reports of meat-eating, and even cannibalism and predation.[46] The stomach anatomy of a hippo is not suited to carnivory, and meat-eating is likely caused by aberrant behavior or nutritional stress.[9]:84

The diet of hippos consists mostly of terrestrial grasses, even though they spend most of their time in the water. Most of their defecation occurs in the water, creating allochthonous deposits of organic matter along the river beds. These deposits have an unclear ecological function.[45] Because of their size and their habit of taking the same paths to feed, hippos can have a significant impact on the land they walk across, both by keeping the land clear of vegetation and depressing the ground. Over prolonged periods hippos can divert the paths of swamps and channels.[47]

Adult hippos move at speeds up to 8 km/h (5 mph) in water. Adult hippos typically resurface to breathe every three to five minutes. The young have to breathe every two to three minutes.[9]:4 The process of surfacing and breathing is automatic, and even a hippo sleeping underwater will rise and breathe without waking. A hippo closes its nostrils when it submerges into the water. As with fish and turtles on a coral reef, hippo occasionally visit cleaning stations and signal by wide-open mouth their readiness for being cleaned of parasites by certain species of fish. This situation is an example of mutualism in which the hippo benefits from the cleansing while the fish receive food.[ Studying the interaction of male and female hippopotamuses has long been complicated by the fact that hippos are not sexually dimorphic and thus females and young males are almost indistinguishable in the field.[49] Although hippos like to lie close to each other, they do not seem to form social bonds except between mothers and daughters, and are not social animals. The reason they huddle close together is unknown.[9]:49

Hippopotamuses are territorial only in water, where a bull presides over a small stretch of river, on average 250 meters in length, and containing ten females. The largest pods can contain over 100 hippos.[9]:50 Other bachelors are allowed in a bull's stretch, as long as they behave submissively toward the bull. The territories of hippos exist to establish mating rights. Within the pods, the hippos tend to segregate by gender. Bachelors will lounge near other bachelors, females with other females, and the bull on his own. When hippos emerge from the water to graze, they do so individually.[9]:4

Hippopotamuses appear to communicate verbally, through grunts and bellows, and it is thought that they may practice echolocation, but the purpose of these vocalizations is currently unknown. Hippos have the unique ability to hold their head partially above the water and send out a cry that travels through both water and air; hippos above and under water will respond.[ Female hippos reach sexual maturity at five to six years of age and have a gestation period of 8 months. A study of endocrine systems revealed that female hippopotamuses may begin puberty as early as 3 or 4 years of age.[51] Males reach maturity at around 7.5 years. A study of hippopotamus reproductive behavior in Uganda showed that peak conceptions occurred during the end of the wet season in the summer, and peak births occurred toward the beginning of the wet season in late winter. This is because of the female's estrous cycle; as with most large mammals, male hippopotamus spermatozoa is active year round. Studies of hippos in Zambia and South Africa also showed evidence of births occurring at the start of the wet season.[9]:60–61 After becoming pregnant, a female hippopotamus will typically not begin ovulation again for 17 months.[51]

Mating occurs in the water with the female submerged for most of the encounter,[9]:63 her head emerging periodically to draw breath. Baby hippos are born underwater at a weight between 25 and 45 kg (60–110 lb) and an average length of around 127 cm (50 in) and must swim to the surface to take their first breath. A mother typically gives birth to only one hippo, although twins also occur. The young often rest on their mothers' backs when in water that is too deep for them, and they swim underwater to suckle. They also will suckle on land when the mother leaves the water. Weaning starts between six and eight months after birth and most calves are fully weaned after a year.[9]:64 Like many other large mammals, hippos are described as K-strategists, in this case typically producing just one large, well-developed infant every couple of years (rather than large numbers of small, poorly developed young several times per year as is common among small mammals such as rodents. Hippopotamuses are by nature very aggressive animals, especially when young calves are present. Frequent targets of their aggression include crocodiles, which often inhabit the same river habitat as hippos. Nile crocodiles, lions and spotted hyenas are known to prey on young hippos.[53] Hippos are very aggressive towards humans, whom they commonly attack whether in boats or on land with no apparent provocation.[54] They are widely considered to be one of the most dangerous large animals in Africa.[55][56]

To mark territory, hippos spin their tails while defecating to distribute their excrement over a greater area.[57] Likely for the same reason, hippos are retromingent – that is, they urinate backwards.[58] When in combat, male hippos use their incisors to block each others attacks, and their lower canines to inflict damage.[6]:260 Hippos rarely kill each other, even in territorial challenges. Usually a territorial bull and a challenging bachelor will stop fighting when it is clear that one hippo is stronger. When hippos become overpopulated, or when a habitat starts to shrink, bulls will sometimes attempt to kill infants, but this behavior is not common under normal conditions.[52] Some incidents of hippo cannibalism have been documented, but it is believed to be the behavior of distressed or sick hippos, and not healthy behavior. The earliest evidence of human interaction with hippos comes from butchery cut marks upon hippo bones at Bouri Formation dated around 160,000 years ago.[59] Later rock paintings and engravings showing hippos being hunted have been found in the mountains of the central Sahara dated 4,000–5,000 years ago near Djanet in the Tassili n'Ajjer Mountains.[9]:1 The ancient Egyptians recognized the hippo as a ferocious denizen of the Nile.

The hippopotamus was also known to the Greeks and Romans. The Greek historian Herodotus described the hippopotamus in The Histories (written circa 440 BC) and the Roman Historian Pliny the Elder wrote about the hippopotamus in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia (written circa 77 AD).[37][60] Hippopotamus was one of the many exotic animals brought to fight gladiators in Rome by the emperor Philip I the Arab to commemorate Rome's 1000 years anniversary in 248 AD. Silver coins with hippo's image were minted that year.[citation needed]

Zulu warriors preferred to be as brave as a hippopotamus, since even lions were not considered as brave. "In 1888, Captain Baden-Powell was part of a column searching for the Zulu chief Dinizulu, who was leading the Usutu people in revolt against the British colonists. The column was joined by John Dunn, a white Zulu chief, who led an impi (army) of 2000 Zulu warriors to join the British." [61]

The words of the Zulu anthem sounded like this:

"Een-gonyama Gonyama! "Invooboo! Yah-bo! Yah-bo! Invooboo!"

"John Dunn was at the head of his impi. [Baden Powell] asked him to translate the Zulu anthem his men had been singing. Dunn laughed and replied: "He is a lion. Yes, he is better than a lion—he is a hippopotamus. Hippopotamuses have long been popular zoo animals. The first zoo hippo in modern history was Obaysch who arrived at the London Zoo on May 25, 1850, where he attracted up to 10,000 visitors a day and inspired a popular song, the Hippopotamus Polka.[63] Hippos have remained popular zoo animals since Obaysch, and generally breed well in captivity. Their birth rates are lower than in the wild, but this is attributed to zoos' not wanting to breed as many hippos as possible, since hippos are large and relatively expensive animals to maintain.[9]:129[63]

Like many zoo animals, hippos were traditionally displayed in concrete exhibits. In the case of hippos, they usually had a pool of water and patch of grass. In the 1980s, zoo designers increasingly designed exhibits that reflected the animals' native habitats. The best known of these, the Toledo Zoo Hippoquarium, features a 360,000 gallon pool for hippos.[64] In 1987, researchers were able to tape, for the first time, an underwater birth (as in the wild) at the Toledo Zoo. The exhibit was so popular that the hippos became the logo of the Toledo Zoo. A red hippo represented the Ancient Egyptian god Set; the thigh is the 'phallic leg of set' symbolic of virility. Set's consort Tawaret was also seen as part hippo.[66] The hippopotamus-headed Tawaret was a goddess of protection in pregnancy and childbirth, because ancient Egyptians recognized the protective nature of a female hippopotamus toward her young.[67] The Ijo people wore masks of aquatic animals like the hippo when practicing their water spirit cults.[68] The Behemoth from the Book of Job, 40:15–24 is also thought to be based on a hippo.[69]

Hippos have been the subjects of various African folktales. According to a Bushmen story; when the Creator assigned each animal their place in nature, the hippos wanted to live in the water, but were refused out of fear that they might eat all the fish. After begging and pleading, the hippos were finally allowed to live in the water on the conditions that they would eat grass instead of fish and would fling their dung so that it can be inspected for fish bones.[70] In a Ndebele tale, the hippo originally had long, beautiful hair but was set on fire by a jealous hare and had to jump into a nearby pool. The hippo lost most of his hair and was too embarrassed to leave the water.[70]

Ever since Obaysch inspired the Hippopotamus Polka, hippos have been popular animals in Western culture for their rotund appearance that many consider comical.[63] Stories of hippos like Huberta who became a celebrity in South Africa in the 1930s for trekking across the country;[71] or the tale of Owen and Mzee, a hippo and tortoise who developed an intimate bond; have amused people who have bought hippo books, merchandise, and many a stuffed hippo toy.[72][73] Hippos were mentioned in the novelty Christmas song "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" that became a hit for child star Gayla Peevey in 1953.[74] They also feature in the songs "The Hippopotamus" and "Hippo Encore" by Flanders and Swann, with the famous refrain Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud. They even inspired a popular board game, Hungry Hungry Hippos. Hippos have also been popular cartoon characters, where their rotund frame is used for humorous effect. The Disney film Fantasia featured a ballerina hippopotamus dancing to the opera, La Gioconda.[38] Other cartoon hippos have included Hanna-Barbera's Peter Potamus, the book and TV series George and Martha, Flavio and Marita on the Animaniacs, Pat of the French duo Pat et Stanley, The Backyardigan's Tasha, and Gloria and Moto-Moto from the Madagascar franchise. A Sesame Street cartoon from the early 1970s features a hippo who lives in the country and likes it quiet, while being disturbed when the mouse who likes it loud moves in with her.[citation needed]

The hippopotamus characters "Happy Hippos" were created in 1988 by the French designer Andre Roche [77] based in Munich, to be hidden in the "Kinder Surprise egg" of the Italian chocolate company Ferrero SpA. These characters were not placid like real hippos[contradiction] but rather cute and lively, and had such a success that they reappeared several times in different products of this company in the following years, increasing their popularity worldwide each time.[citation needed] The Nintendo Company published in the years 2001 and 2007 Game Boy adventures of them. In the game of chess, the hippopotamus lends its name to the Hippopotamus Defense, an opening system, which is generally considered weak.The River Horse is a popular outdoor sculpture at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Botswana, Moremi National Park, Moremi Game reserve, private Reserve, Farm, chobe National park, Chobe Game Reserve, Zambia, Zambezi River, Livingstone, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, Wildlife Conservation Project, Maramba River Lodge, South Africa, Krugger National Park. art beach blue bw california canada canon china city concert de england europe family festival film flower flowers food france friends green instagramapp iphoneography italy japan live london music nature new newyork night nikon nyc paris park party people photography portrait red sky snow square squareformat street summer sunset travel trip uk usa vacation water wedding white winter