ExtinctZoo - Everything You Know About Camels Is Wrong

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Think you know camels? Think again. They didn’t come from deserts, their humps don't hold water, and they're certainly not the boring pack animal you've heard about - these are freaks turned mammals.Wild camel conservation group: https://www.wildcamels.com/

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Not panting, not sweating, not even looking mildly inconvenienced, just vibing conditions that would turn most mammals into beef jerky within hours. And obviously, this is the camel. And before you roll your eyes thinking, pft, I already know everything there is to know about the camel, water humps and all, let me just stop you right there, because literally everything you think you know about camels is wrong. They don't store water in their humps, they did not evolve in the desert, and they're not particularly good at being normal mammals. What they are is nature's middle finger to the laws

of biology, an animal so thoroughly bizarre that we're still discovering new ways in which it breaks the rules. And I'm not talking about small rule breaks here and there. I'm talking about an animal that can lose 30% of its body weight in water and keep walking. Wish to put that into perspective, most mammals die at 15%. I'm talking about an animal that can drink 114 liters of water in one sitting without going into a coma, to which you'd be lucky to get to seven liters without dying. I'm talking about an animal whose blood cells are in the wrong shape, whose antibodies have decided to ditch 500 million years of evolution, and whose body temperature swings by 6 degrees Celsius every day just because it can't be bothered to sweat for the quote-unquote little

things like that. And here's the first mineblower. Camels are not from the Middle East, or Africa, or anywhere sandy, for that matter. These supposed desert animals actually started their journey in, wait for it, North America. Yes, you heard that right. While our ancestors weren't even yet a twinkle in evolution's eye, proto-camels were chilling what's now Nebraska, probably complaining about the weather. And we're talking way back, like 15 million years ago back during the Eocene.

In the earliest camel ancestors, animals like protylopus, were about the size of a beagle, not the massive humped beasts we know of today. But over millions of years, they evolved, diversified, and spread across the continent, getting not just bigger, but also weirder. And by the myocene, you had creatures like apic camelis roaming about, which was basically a giraffe cosplaying as a camel. With like so long, it didn't make any Instagram model jealous. But the real plot twist came around 6 to 7 million years ago, when these American camelids decided to take a road trip across the Bering Land Bridge, back when it was actually land,

and not, you know, the strait. And this wasn't some Max Exodus, it was more like a slow migration that took thousands of years, with some going to Asia and becoming the camels we know today, while others decided to go to South America a bit later on, and become llamas, Apocas, the Kunyas, and guanacos. And then, in classic quaternary extinction fashion, the North American camels, the originals, went completely extinct about 10,000 years ago, likely from a combination of climate change and humans showing up with pointy sticks. So while their cousins were conquering deserts and mountains elsewhere, the American camels just, well, died. But like I said, this wasn't the end of the line, as some camels went to Asia and other camelids went to South

America. And the split between camels and their South American cousins actually happened about 17 million years ago before everyone decided to leave North America, which in evolutionary terms is a long time ago. That's like your last common ancestor with a chimp, plus another 11 million years for a good measure. And normally, when animal populations split for that long, they can't breed anymore. The genetic door, so to speak, basically slams shut, with them having different chromosomes, incompatible DNA, the whole we've grown apart thing, etc. It's why you can't breed a line with the domestic cat, even though they're both mammals of the same general lineage. But camels, Well, camels looked at those rules and said,

Nah, this is Alabama. Because the one humped dromedary, i.e. Camelus dromedarius, and the two humped Bactrianus, Camelus Bactrianus, can still make babies together. These hybrids, cult bucts, usually have one weird lopsided hump with a dip in the middle. And they're actually prized in some regions because they're bigger than both parents, kind of like Ligers, and thus can carry heavier loads. And that's crazy and all, but both of these guys are camelis, meaning they've only been split for five million years.

You know, no biggie. But in 1998, scientists at the Camel Reproduction Center in Dubai, because yes, that's a real place, decided to see just how far they could push this. And what they did was take a female llama and artificially inseminate her with dromedary camel sperm. The result? A creature they called a comma. And the comma has no hump, a face that couldn't decide if it was a camel or a llama, and legs that were somewhere in between, while also having a temperament, which I quote,

was a behavioral disappointment. But the important thing to note here is that this is 17 million. years of separation, and yet it still worked. And that's pretty wild in all, but just their extensive breeding abilities doesn't really address the insanity that are camels. And a good example of this is the third player in the camel game that everyone seems to forget about, the wild Bactrian camel, i.e. Camelus, ferris. Now these guys live in the goby desert of Mongolia and China, and they're not just feral domestic camels, despite what their species name might have you believe, they're instead a completely separate species to the domestic

Bactrian camel. And how separate you ask? Well, they split from the ancestral population of the Bactrians about 1.1 million years ago, and have been doing their own thing ever since. And boy, have they been doing some weird things. For one, wild Bacterians can drink salt water, not just slightly brackish water, but legitimate salt water that would send most mammals into kidney failure. They're also critically endangered, with only 950 left in the wild, making them rare than giant pandas. But apparently nobody cares about saving question-by-looking animals, so while pandas get all conservation money and cute merchandise, wild bacterians are out here drinking poison water and wondering where their PR team went. However, I am dropping a link to a conservation group

down below, so check that out. But anyways, this ability to drink water is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to camel survival, and there's a lot more that goes into it, which lets them survive in places that look like Mars, but hotter and with things that want to eat you. And first up is that coat. Now, you normally think an animal living in the desert would want less fur, not more. And that's logical, and pretty much what any reason is, reasonably large animal would do, but camels aren't reasonable, they're camels. So instead, they rock a thick, shaggy coat that would make a yak jealous. But here's the genius part. It's not actually keeping heat in, it's keeping heat out. You see, the fur works like the world's

best thermos, except instead of keeping your coffee hot, keeps the camel's body cool. And it's so effective that if you shave a camel, they have to sweat 50% more just to avoid overheating. And then on top of that, in the summer, the fur even changes to a lighter color to reflect more sunlight. Then there are the legs. As you can probably see, camel legs are comedically long, but this isn't an aesthetic flaw, it's a functional feature, because when the ground temperature hits 70 degrees Celsius, or 158 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to literally cook an egg, having your body farther from the sand can mean the difference between survival and becoming a, well, fried egg. But my favorite adaptation is what scientists call the pedestal, which kind of works like how you'd

expect with a name like that. You see, when camels lie down, they don't just flop under the sand like your uncle at the beach, they instead have this thick, hardened pad on their chest that props their body up, creating an air gap underneath, allowing air to circulate under the body and cooling them down without any effort. But surviving in the desert isn't just about what you're wearing. It's also about what you eat, or rather can eat. So let me ask you this. Do you know what grows in the desert? Well, the answer here is not much. And what does grow usually comes with thorns, spines, needles, or other plant-based defense systems that basically say, do not eat me. And yet, camels eat them anyway. And I'm not talking about delicately nibbling around the best parts. I'm talking about

straight of crunching through thorny branches like their potato chips. I mean, to put this in a perspective, acacia trees, which have thorns that can puncture literal cartires, are basically camel salad, and their palate itself is basically non-existent. At least it would seem so, seeing that they'll eat dry, woody shrubs that have the nutritional value of cardboard and the texture of fiberglass insulation. But this all begs the question of how, and the answer is more simple them what you might think, which is that their mouths and stomachs are basically biological tanks. The inside of their mouth is lined with thick, cone-shaped papillet, which kind of look like hundreds of fleshy spikes, that are tough enough to withstand the thorns, as well as help

direct them down in a vertical orientation, to help avoid getting them stuck anywhere. And then their lips are split and extremely mobile, letting them pick around the worst spines with surprising delicacy if they really want to. But when they don't want to, crunch crunch, crunch, Desert salad. And speaking of crunchy stuff, living in the desert means sand everywhere. And to get around sand getting in their sensitive parts, camels also had to evolve built-in safety goggles. And by safety goggles, I mean very long eyelashes and three eyelids. Yeah, three. And the third one is transparent and sweeps across the eye horizontally, kind of like a windshield wiper. And to make it even more OPEC during sandstorms, they can literally just close the third eyelid and still see where they're going. And their nostrils are somehow even more impressive. Not only can they close them completely to keep sand out, which I'd love to see you try without using your hands, but the inside is also designed like a maze of twisted passages. And this does two things. One, it helps filter out sand, and two, it also acts like a moisture reclamation system,

which is a lot more important than it might sound, but we'll get to that particular piece of weirdness in a minute. Now, if you've ever been to a beach, you'll know that walking on sand is exhausting. Every step sinks, your feet shift, and ultimately use twice amount of energy to go half the distance, and don't even get me started on walking uphill on dunes, which is probably the closest thing to nature's treadmill. But camels were rightfully like, yeah, nah, and solved this problem by evolving what are essentially biological snowshoes, or rather sand shoes. You see, their feet aren't hooves in their traditional sense, despite what they might look like. Instead, they have two-toed

feet with soft pads underneath, and these broad, thick, fatty pads under the feet spread out slightly when they walk, distributing their weight over a larger area, as well as being thick enough to handle the scorching soft sand. And the design is so effective that engineers have actually studied them to create better rover tires for future missions to the moon. But just like rovers, camels are not just impressive on the outside, but also under the hood. And this is where they go from well adapted to downright weird. Let's start with their blood.

You know how your blood cells are nice round discs like tiny frisbee's floating through your veins? Well, camel red blood cells obviously thought that was too mainstream, and so their blood cells are oval. Now, this might not sound like a big deal, but imagine trying to push marbles through a straw versus pushing elongated pills. When a camel gets dehydrated, in order to talking scorched earth, tumbleweed blowing through your veins, typo-dehydrated, their blood becomes much thicker due to the lower water content.

And in any other mammal, these round blood cells would jam up like rush hour traffic, causing clots, strokes, and potential death. But oval cells? Well, they just slide on through like they're on a water slide, even with the added viscosity of the blood. But obviously, like any self-respecting hydrohomie, even though they can deal with dehydration, they're still big fans of water, massive fans, in fact. And when these guys actually find water, let's just say they get a bit excited. Because the camel will walk up to a water source and chug it. And I mean chug, drinking up to 114 liters or 30 gallons in a single

session. Which to put that into perspective is like drinking basically a bathtub amount of water in one go. And in literally any other mammal, this would cause what's called water intoxication. your blood sodium level would dilute so fast that your cells would swell like water balloons trying to balance out the hypotonia, which in turn would cause your brain to literally swell, and a bad stuff to happen. But with camels, yeah, they just kind of burp and walk away like nothing happened. But honestly, that's nothing. Remember when I mentioned their nostrils or moisture reclamation systems? Well, let's talk about that. Now for you, every time you exhale, you lose water vapor. It's why you can see your breath on cold days, with it literally being your body's

water floating away. And in the desert, where water is scarcer than a PlayStation 5 at launch, losing moisture with every breath is basically a death sentence. But camels, following typical camel fashion, have fixed this. The inside of their nose is filled with complex turbinate bones, creating essentially a labyrinth of passages. And when they exhale, the warm, moist air from their lungs hits these cooler surfaces, which in turn causes water vapor to condense, kind of like what happens when you breathe on a cold window, which thus allows the water to stay within the camel's body. not sound all that impressive, but wait until you hear the fact that this system is so efficient that camel breath basically comes out completely dry, with them reclaiming about 60% of the moisture

from every exhale, helping to keep them hydrated. And so obviously, staying hydrated would help not only with circulating your blood and breathing, but also keeps you, well, cooler. But honestly, being unbelievably hot isn't really a problem for camels, as camel body temperature can swing by 6 degrees Celsius or 11 degrees Fahrenheit without problem. Now your body temperature varies by about 1 degrees Celsius on a normal day. If it swings 2 degrees Celsius, you're sick. If it swings 4 degrees Celsius, you're in the hospital. If it swings 6 degrees Celsius, yeah, you're dead.

But for camels, that's just another Tuesday. During the cool desert night, their body temperature drops to about 34 degrees Celsius, or 93 degrees Fahrenheit. And as the day heats up, instead of immediately starting to sweat and lose precious water, they just, well, let their body temperature rise, and rise. and by the afternoon they're running at 40 degrees Celsius or 104 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that would have most mammals in heat stroke. But here's the genius part.

By letting their body heat up, they delay sweating for hours. And while other animals are dumping water from sunrise, camels don't even start sweating until ambient temperatures reach around 49 degrees Celsius or 120 degrees Fahrenheit. And when they do finally sweat, it evaporates at the skin level, rather than at the surface of the coat, meaning that it's the body heat that's getting wicked away, as opposed to the outside air's heat.

And the energy savings of all these mechanisms are insane. One study in Australia found that in the desert, where the days reached a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius, or 107 degrees Fahrenheit, cattle would lose about 7 to 8% of their body water per day, while camels only lost 1 to 2%. And in a situation with no water, the cattle died within four days,

while camels made it at 20. And speaking of water conservation, saving water doesn't just happen through its front end, but also the back end. You see, camel pee isn't pee in any sense that we understand it. It's more akin to syrup. And this is because their kidneys are so incredibly efficient at reclaiming water, causing it to become much thicker than regular.

But the real party trick is the poop, as camel poop comes out so dry that you can burn it immediately. In fact, Bedouin people have been using fresh camel dung as cooking fuel for hundreds of years. But just when you thought we were done with the weird internal stuff, let me introduce you to camel antibodies. Now, normal mammalian antibodies are Y-shaped molecules made of two heavy chains and two light chains. And they work great. In fact, they've been working great for hundreds and millions of years, having evolved in our earliest ancestors.

But camels being camels looked at this perfectly functional system and decided to innovate anyway. And about 25 million years ago, way before they were even thinking about deserts, camels, well, the ancestors to camels, evolved a second type of antibody that nearly everyone else has missed. and these are called heavy chain only antibodies, or HCABs for short. And they're just wrong, with them missing the light chains I mentioned entirely. But these weird antibodies can actually slip into cracks and crevices on viruses and bacteria that normal antibodies can't reach. And they're so good at their job that scientists are now studying them for human medicine.

I mean, there are even biotech companies worth billions of dollars based entirely on reverse engineering camel antibodies. Let that sink in. Now at this point, you might have realized that there's one very crucial thing, that I have not yet talked about. So let me address the elephant, well, camel in the room, the hump, the thing everyone quote unquote knows about camels. I mean, people will proudly say with full confidence at parties, camel store water in their

humps, that's how they survive in the desert, yada, yada, yada. But that is wrong, wrong, and wrong. If you slice open a camel hump, which, please don't, you won't find a water balloon, a water tank, or really anything liquid at all. What you'll find instead is fat, just fat. up to 36 kilograms or 80 pounds of fat to be precise. And now if you corrected that person who so confidently said that the hump store water, they might respond with something like, but that doesn't make any sense.

Why would you store fat in the desert? You need water. And that's where they'd be wrong again, because camels are playing 40 chess while everyone else is playing checkers. You see, their fatty hump is incredibly useful for three different reasons. One, fat packs more than twice the calories per gram as carbohydrates or protein, meaning it's the most efficient way to store energy, bar none. Two, when fat breaks down, it actually produces water as a byproduct. And for every kilogram of fat metabolized, a camel gets about 1.1 liters of water. And then three, by concentrating all their fat in one or two lumps in their back,

camels avoid having it distributed under their skin, where it would act as insulation, which in turn would only serve to make them hotter in an already brutally hot environment. And so when times are good and food is plentiful, the hump stands tall and firm. But when food is scarce, the hump shrinks and eventually flop to the side like a deflated balloon. It kind of acts like a visible fuel gauge, and you can look at a camel and tell how well it's been eating by its hump-plumpness. Now with all this said, survival in the desert, or really anywhere, isn't just about pure survival in the sense of my survival. It's also about the survival of the species, and in order to guarantee that, you need to reproduce. And of course, in typical camel fashion, this just cannot be a normal process.

So without any further ado, let me introduce you to the Dola. Now, I won't stand here and slander all camels of this part, so let me first clarify that the dola is thankfully only found in male dromedary camels, so not the Bactrian. But these camels are weirdos, and during mating season, when they want to impress the ladies, they inflate their dola and push it out of their mouth. Which, let me be clear, they basically turn their throat inside out and blow it up like a giant pink balloon that hangs out the side of their mouth. And then at the same time, to make it that much more appealing, they make horrible gurgling sounds that sound like the cross between some Jurassic Park sound. effect and Chewbacca. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton

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So, in other words, it is without question one of the most disturbing things you'll ever see a mammal do voluntarily. And yet, female camels love it, apparently. The bigger and gross of the dola, the more attractive the male, probably. But hey, who might have judged? But of course, that's not all. It just couldn't be, as the males will also urinate on their own tails and whip them around to spread that oh-so-irresistible scent.

And then at the same time, they also gurgle copious amounts of saliva, causing them to phone with the mouth like they have rabies. But again, apparently, this is all super attractive. And so, with a mating ritual so, uh, well, unique, you might not be surprised to hear that they're also a little bit off in the head. Specifically, they're jerks. And now it's in a cute, grumpy cat way, but more than a, I will try to bite your face off and feel nothing kind of way. And these guys are notorious for being bad-tempered. And also holding grudges, with there being at least one story of a camel who literally bit his owner's head off after he left the camel tied out in the heat the whole day.

And if getting your head potentially bit off wasn't bad enough, just like their cousins, the llama, they spit. And I don't mean a little pitouy. And when a camel spits, it's more like vomiting on you with spit. As it's not just saliva, it's also partially digested whatever the heck they ate mixed with stomach acid. Oh, and they also aim for the face. But with all this said, despite being grumpy, vengeful,

and prone to spitting stomach acid, Camels have been one of the most important animals in human history. We're talking empire building, world-changing levels of important. I mean, in some sense, the domestication of camels essentially rewrote the map of the ancient world. They became key animals for transportation, not only for personal purposes, but also for trade purposes, and there are a mainstay for transportation on the Silk Road, which is, you know, perhaps the most influential trade route in the entire history of mankind.

But they weren't just useful for trade. Camels were also weapons of war. And I don't mean the typical cavalry charge way, I more mean the same thing. I more mean the psychological warfare way. You see, horses, those refined, oh so noble animals, are absolutely terrified of camels. The smell, the noise, the shape, perhaps the dola, horses want nothing to do with them. And some ancient armies figured this out and started putting camels at the front of their battle lines. For example, the Battle of Thimbra in 547 BC was literally won by Cyrus the Great due to him using camels to freak out Croas' cavalry.

And besides getting people to places and acting as the boogeyman for horses, they also kept people alive, literally. You see, camel milk is valuable, very valuable. And why? Well, because in the desert, camel milk is basically like a superfood that makes regular milk look like white water. First off, it's got three times the vitamin C of cow milk. And in the desert, where fresh fruits and vegetables are about as common as Wi-Fi signals,

this is huge, as it can both prevent and treat scurvy. And it also doesn't curdle easily, so it stays fresh for longer in hot conditions. And here's the real wild part. Camel milk contains unique proteins with antimicrobial properties, and some studies even suggest it can help with diabetes and autoimmune disorders. Now, is the science 100% conclusive? Not yet, but it's obviously conclusive enough that companies are pouring millions and making millions from both selling camel milk and the adjacent research, because the preliminary

results are that promising. Oh, and people with lactose intolerance can also drink camel milk without problems, as the proteins are structured differently than cow milk, and they also have less lactose. The Bedouin even have a saying, Water is the soul, but camel milk, is life. And they weren't exaggerating, with having many documented cases of people surviving for weeks on nothing but camel milk.

And to that, I say, try doing that with cow milk and see how you feel. So, with all these adaptations and survival skills, you would think that camels would be thriving everywhere. And you'd be right, too right. In fact, let me tell you about Australia's dirty little secret. In the 1840s, British colonists had a brilliant idea. Their thought process kind of went like this.

Australia is basically a desert. Camels love deserts. And so Australia plus camel is obviously a great mix. And so they imported camels from Afghanistan to help explore and develop the outback. And the camels unsurprisingly did great. They helped the transport, made trade more lucrative, and just generally helped with everything you might need in a desert. But then cars were invented, and suddenly nobody needed camels anymore. So what do they do? Well, in typical human fashion, they just let them go, into the wild. and let me just specify into the Australian wild, which is a continent with no natural predators for large mammals, and lots of desert.

So what could possibly go wrong? And if you were thinking everything, you'd be right. Because those released camels did not die. They did not even struggle. Honestly, it was probably more like they looked at the Australian outback and said, finally, a desert that understands us. Because as soon as they were set loose, they started breeding and breeding and breeding. And by 2008, there were over one,

million feral camels roaming Australia, with the population doubling every eight years. And they weren't content to just hang around the deep desert either. Farrell camels were destroying water sources, breaking into towns, causing traffic accidents, and generally being a massive ecological disaster. They destroy water holes, leaving native animals to die, and they eat native plants to decimation. And so all of this was obviously a big problem, and the Australian government eventually had to authorize massive coals. And when I say massive coals, we're talking military-style operations with helicopters and

sharpshooters. And between 2009 and 2013, they killed 160,000 camels, from helicopters, that is. It was basically as close as you can get to a camel apocalypse. But remember what I said about them holding grudges? Well, there are still hundreds of thousands of them out there, and they're likely just waiting, planning their revenge. Just kidding, probably. But honestly, the irony is hilarious in the worst way. An animal from North America, perfected in Asian Africa, is now an invasive species destroying Australia. It's like biological musical chairs, except everyone loses. But where does this leave camels today? Well, if you've been following, it's complicated. Domestic camels are doing just fine. There are approximately over 35 million of them worldwide,

with camel still being essential for life in many parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. But remember those wild Bactrian camels I mentioned earlier? The ones that can drink salt water? Well, they are in serious trouble. There are only about 950 left in the wild, making them one of the most endangered large mammals on earth. They're getting squeezed by mining, hunting, and habitat loss, with even wolf attacks increasing as their preferred prey disappears. And here's the real kicker. These guys might be the only true wild camels left. Every other camel on earth descends from domestic stock. And so, these saltwater drinking weirdos in the goby desert might be our only window into what camels were like before humans got involved.

And we're letting them disappear, because nobody wants to save a fugly animal that spits. which is why I'm dropping a link to the Wild Camel Protection Foundation, a conservation group, which, by the way, was literally co-founded with Jane Goodall, who if you didn't know, fundamentally changed primate conservation on our planet. So consider donating to this group if you like to help. But on the bright side, or perhaps not so bright side for everyone else, climate change is making more of the world camel-friendly. As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift,

marginal lands that once supported cattle are becoming too harsh. But for camels, just another Tuesday. And we're already seeing in certain parts of Africa that pastoralists are switching from cattle to camels as the weather becomes more severe, which makes a lot of sense seeing that camels need less water, eat plants that cattle won't touch, and can travel farther to find food. So what's the takeaway from all this camel madness? Well, probably the biggest thing is that specialization can be a type of superpower. I mean, camels aren't good at everything.

For one, they're terrible at being normal mammals, but they're amazing at being desert ones. So the next time someone mentions camels, don't think of them as some boy. boring desert animals with water humps, think of them as what they truly are. Dola blowing, antibody innovating, water recycling, revenge plotting, acid-spitting survivors that have turned living in the most brutal places on earth into just another Tuesday. They're not majestic, they're not beautiful, they probably smell, and definitely have the personality of a DMV employee on a Monday,

but when the world ends and we're all fighting over the last drops of water, the camels will be standing there, chewing their cud, making weird noises, with their body temperatures drifting lazily between hypothermia and heatstroke, just waiting to spit on our graves, probably. So maybe the real question isn't really how did camels get so weird, but rather why everything else stayed so normal. I mean, in a universe that's mostly empty space and exploding stars, and on a planet that's had at least five mass extinctions and as many ice ages,

being a normal mammal seems like the weird choice. Now, yes, they turn their blood cells into the wrong shape, put their fat in a backpack and called it a day, and breathe their own water while peeing syrup. But hey, it's working. And in the game of life, considering our climatic trends, they're probably winning. Oh, and last fun fact.

Only 14% of you are subscribed. So if you enjoyed the video, consider hitting that sub button. And unlike camels, I promise not to spit stomach acid on you or blow my soft palate in your direction. Well, as long as you hit the sub button, that is. Anyways, thanks for watching.

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