What kinds of camels are there?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

These unusual animals are not like the others. Many nations cannot imagine life without majestic and strong camels, domesticated many centuries ago. In some countries, the we alth of families is determined by the number of camel herds. Camel pack for a very long time in the East was the standard measure of weight. And the old Arabic tales, in which the “ship of the desert” appears in one way or another, are spread all over the world.

The owners of these animals claim that camels are smart, understand people perfectly, but each of them has its own character. And some are downright stubborn!

Many of us have known from school that there are different types of camels, similar to each other, but somehow different. What are their similarities and differences?

Common features of the family

Of course, the main distinguishing feature is the presence of a hump. By the way, it is on this basis that one can easily understand what species a camel belongs to. The camelid family unites several genera that are not camels, but are very closely related to them. All of these animals are mammals. The family belongs to the order of artiodactyls and the suborder of corns. The peculiar structure of the legs is one ofthe main features of the family. All camelids do not have (functional) hooves, and the underside of the foot is a calloused cushion. Some births are paired, some are not.

Another characteristic feature is a long neck. But the most unusual, perhaps, is another feature of camelids, which is not visible to the naked eye. All members of the family have oval red blood cells, not round like almost all other animals (including humans).

It is noteworthy that the vast majority of the members of the family are excellent swimmers. In the natural habitat of camels, as a rule, there is a shortage of water, many of them have not seen lakes and rivers in their lives, so the mechanism of this phenomenon is not completely clear.

Prehistoric Alticamelus

These animals, from which today there are only fragments of skeletons scattered around the globe, were one of the most numerous representatives of the "mammoth fauna". The genus included species of camels similar to each other, the names of which were given either by the surnames of the researchers (for example, Knobloch's camel), or by the habitat (Alexandrian camel).

In total, modern scientists distinguish up to ten species of extinct camels. All of them were larger than modern ones, had very long necks, outwardly resembled giraffes in some way (but the resemblance is exceptionally convergent). Alticamelus were common in the Cenozoic.

Bactrian with two humps

Types of camels differ not onlythe number of humps, but also the size of the body. The presence of two humps is the main feature by which you can easily determine that it is a Bactrian in front of you, but the height and weight of the animal are also important. The Bactrian camel is larger and heavier than its one-humped relative and all other members of the family included in other genera.

This species tolerates heat well, but it is not afraid of moderate frosts. But high humidity is detrimental to Bactrians. It is found in Central and Central Asia, in Mongolia and the regions of China and Russia bordering on it. People have bred many breeds of Bactrian, which are widely used in the economy as a draft force or pack animal. Camel meat and milk are very valuable, due to which they occupy an important place in the national cuisines of many peoples. Of considerable interest is the thick wool of the Bactrian. A large number of camels of this species are kept in circuses and zoos.

Khaptagai

Most sources name only such types of camels as one-humped and two-humped. But some scientists tend to single out the haptagai as a separate species. The results of genetic studies and obvious external differences speak in favor of the version. Moreover, even the belief that the Bactrian descended from the wild haptagai is questioned. Outwardly, they are similar. But the wild camel is smaller than representatives of meat domestic breeds.

For the first time, the subspecies was described by the famous researcher Przhevalsky. At the time of the scientist, the population of wild bactrian camels was much larger than now. Currentlythere are only a few hundred haptagai.

All kinds of studies of these animals allow us to better study them, to determine measures that will help maintain the number of livestock. In addition, scientists are trying to establish the degree of relationship between two-humped. Perhaps these are still different types of camels, but at present, official science does not recognize this.

Dromedar - ship of the desert

One-humped camel is common in the Middle East and North Africa, in Asia Minor. He is also unusually hardy, unpretentious, strong. A man domesticated a wild one-humped camel several millennia ago, since then the dromedary has been an integral part of the world order of several peoples. Like the two-humped fellow, it is of great value in the economy.

Dromedars do not occur in nature. The ancestors of this animal, not amenable to domestication, died out at the dawn of our era. There is information about wild dromedaries, but these are not autochthonous, but feral animals that once lived with humans. And yes, these cases are rare. There is no question of isolating lost or runaway dromedaries into a separate species.

Comparing the types of camels, photos of which are presented in this article, you can easily identify the dromedary by the presence of a luxurious hump.

Other members of the family

Camels, llamas and vicuñas are the three genera that make up the camelid family. The types of genera are few. The genus of llamas, for example, has only two: the actual llamas (domestic) and the wild form of guanaco. The genus Vicuña includesthere is only one species - vicuñas, very similar to guanacos, but even smaller.

Some researchers call the genera of llamas and vicuñas New World camels. They are much smaller than dromedaries and bactrians and do not even have a hint of a hump.

Who is Nar?

This unusual word combines a huge variety of dromedary and bactrian hybrids. Individuals obtained from parents of different species, like many other hybrids, are distinguished by remarkable he alth, physical strength and endurance even greater than those of their parents. Nars are capable of producing viable offspring, but in the third generation, weak individuals are usually born that are of no value to breeders. Nars are crossed with both Bactrians and dromedaries, getting good results. It is not uncommon for a hybrid camel to be born large, grow rapidly, and become even larger in adult size than its camel parent.

What kind of hybrid camel breeders get depends on the goal. With the help of crossbreeding, they usually seek to highlight any trait: the length and quality of wool, the specific amount of meat, endurance. There are a huge number of camel breeding schemes. Kospak, gill, iner, kuz, kez-nar - this is not a complete list. However, hybrid individuals are not distinguished into separate species and even into breeds.

In the wild, this phenomenon does not occur for the reason that the two-humped and one-humped camels have a different range. It is noteworthy that the Nars always have one hump,but it is formed from two fused.