FACTORALY - E45 CAMELS

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Camels are the most amazing creatures. Designed for their habitat, they store water in their blood, fat in their hump (so they don't sweat much), and can carry large loads and run like the wind. This episode explores the beauty (literally in one case) of the design of the camel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Simon! Hello Bruce, how are you today? I'm pretty damned good, thank you very much. Are we allowed to say damned? I don't know. We should take a poll. Let's have a survey. If you think we can't say pretty damned good, then write to us and let us know. If you think we can, then we'll just ignore it.

If you are new to all of this malarkey and wondering what on earth is going on, I'm Simon Wells. I'm Bruce Fielding. We are both professional voiceover artists and we both love facts and trivia. I'm Simon Wells. I'm Bruce Fielding. We are both professional voiceover artists, and we both love facts and trivia. Love them to bits. Useless information.

No, there's no such thing as useless information. It's all useful information. It's all grist to the mill. It is. And once a week, Bruce and I sit here in this wonderful space that we like to call Factory. And we pick a subject, and we chat about it. And we find all the interesting little bits and bobs and historical stuff and interesting facts that we can bring to you, our dear listeners.

So what is this week's subject, Simon? This week's subject, Bruce, is camels. Of course it is. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? Have you ever met a camel? I've met a camel in a zoo. That's about as far as my experience goes. How about you?

Well, I rode one at London Zoo when you were allowed to ride animals in London Zoo. They had a choice of a camel or an elephant. And I think over time, I've probably did both. Right, okay. So I have ridden a camel in the zoo. I've also ridden a camel in Egypt. i've also ridden a camel in egypt and i've ridden a camel in australia ah wonderful uh in fact one of the camels i wrote in egypt uh was they it was a weird name they called it a camel scuba dive and i had this vision of like

camels wearing scuba gear and in fact what it was was that you put all your scuba gear on the back of a camel and then you go to like a an encampment uh by sort of away from all the everybody else in the red sea yeah by the red sea and you then go diving where nobody else goes diving right apart from the people who drive their camels to this encampment okay so you ride your camel in order to go scuba diving. You are not scuba diving on a camel. Exactly. That would seem rather inefficient to me.

Let's dive straight in here and work out essentially what is a camel. It occurred to me earlier on, when i think of a camel out in the desert i automatically picture the thing with one hump when i think about a camel in a zoo i automatically picture the thing with two humps okay let me tell you the easy way to tell the difference between the two go on there are two well there are actually technically three sorts of camel oh there's a dromedary a bactrian camel and a wild bactrian camel the wild bactrian camel is very rare yes it lives in mongolia um but the very easy way to tell the difference between a dromedary and a bactrian camel is to imagine the capital letter that starts dromedary and bactrian. Yes. So you've got a D and a B.

Yes. If you rotate it anti-clockwise, a quarter turn, you've got a D on its back and a B on its back. A D on its back has one hump. That's correct. A B on its back has two humps. Oh, that's wonderful. Easy.

That's very good indeed. Now, so there have been quite a few myths dispelled for me during this research i've always been one of those smug people who goes around saying ah but is it a camel or is it a dromedary thinking they're two different things right a dromedary is a type of camel correct bactrian is a type of camel correct so they So they are both camels, and therefore I've been saying the wrong thing. So to prove the fact that they are both camels, the dromedary, its Latin name is Camelus dromedarius, and the Bactrian camel's Latin name is Camelus bactrianus.

So they both begin with Camelus, which kind of proves the fact that they're both camels. Yes, they are definitely both camels. What makes a camel a camel a camel go on it never occurred to me before but it's obvious when you when you realize it if you want to stay cool in a hot place you're best off being skinny yes because you don't want to be surrounded by fat which heats up and makes you sweat, makes you hot. However, if you want to survive in an environment that's quite hostile, you do need to be able to store food and water somehow so you can survive. What the camel does is most of the camel is skinny, apart from the humps or hump.

And that's where all the fat is. And the water is actually all in the blood. But come on to that in a minute. But yes, all the fat is in the hump. And the camel can live off the fat in its hump for quite some time, several weeks, and doesn't get hot because the rest of it's skinny. Yes. So that was another myth that was dispelled for me. I remember as a kid being rigorously informed that camels stored water in their humps. Yes. Of course, they don't. As you say, it's fat.

Yes. Up to about 40 kilos of fat. Yeah, yeah. Quite a lot. And if a camel goes through a prolonged period of of not eating or drinking you can actually see that the fat in the hump being used being drained away and their their humps sort of start to flop over and and look a bit saggy yes camels can i had a look at how long exactly a camel can go without food and water uh it varies depending on their environment the time

of year and so on and so on. In wintertime, they can go up to several months, sort of four, five, six months without eating or drinking. When it's blazing hot, we're talking about a few days. But either way, yes, they can go without. Yeah, so I was having a look about where these different varieties of camels live. Actually, let's start with where do they come from, because this was news to me. I think of a camel, and I think of the Sahara Desert. I think of Egypt. I think of hot, deserty places. Camels, or at least the camel family as a whole, first evolved in North America around 40-odd million years ago.

And the Cameloid family contains camelids and camelops, which sounds an awful lot like King Arthur's Castle to me. But they first evolved in North America around 40-odd million years ago. They were originally found as far north in America as Alaska and far south as Mexico. Yeah. Over the following years, they sort of gradually mooched over to Asia via the land bridge that at that point existed between Alaska and Russia. They got as far as Asia and there they sort of really settled down and so therefore we we all think of you know camels as coming from sort of uh you know the the two humped ones the Bactrians as I now know how to remember um are quite prevalent around um sort of China Mongolia yeah the Gobi desert they're very thick fluffy woolly animals and they they use that fur to keep warm in the winter and then they shed it like nobody's

business during the summer um and it's it's those it's the bactrian camels that we get um camel hair from for making camel hair coats and that sort of thing um because they're a lot more productive in in hair compared to the dromedaries yes but. But dromedaries are far more widespread and there are far more of them. There are roughly 30-something million camels in the world. Estimates are a bit sketchy. 90% of those camels are dromedaries. So a tiny number of bactrians compared to dromedaries.

There's quite a few feral ones as well. Yes, there are. Running wild, especially in Australia. Yes. Because we ship them there, basically. They're not native to Australia. They were quite useful for mining and, you know, going long distances into the outback. Yeah, I'd sort of heard that they were there, but I never really took it too seriously.

I thought there was sort of a handful of them there, you know. Camels were, yeah, first introduced into Australia in the 1800s. Explorers took them there, you know, they wanted to have a poke around into the interior of Australia, which is, you know very desert-y and camels have quite a good rep for for doing well in in the desert um so you know we we took a whole load of camels over there to to explore with around 20 000 camels were imported into australia we sort of started off with a handful of them and then went oh actually they're they're quite useful they're of started off with a handful of them and then went, oh, actually, they're quite useful. They're quite good. They carry a lot of weight.

As you said, they can carry about a thousand pounds worth of cargo on their backs. Or they can carry a single rider for up to 100 miles in one day before getting pooped. You see, this is why they're so good. This is why camels are just brilliant things. So we sort of started off with a few of them, in a few more brought in a few more by 1920 the camel population in australia was around 150 000 um and then when the railways

came in and started carrying goods yes longer further faster cheaper the camels were just sort of released. And now there's just a whole load of dromedaries roaming around the Australian outback. You mentioned that they can last a long time. And you mentioned that you thought that the water was kept in the humps. Yes. I mean, they do take on a lot of water. They can drink 40 gallons of water. I mean, they can drink about 26 gallons in about 10 minutes.

Oh, my goodness. Crikey. That's my car, I think. I was going to say, what a guzzler. Yeah. But what they do is they don't store it in the hump. They store it in their blood. Right. So the blood gets uh super saturated with with water like super hydrated okay and they just gradually leach the water out of their blood to to maintain their hydration oh they're really clever another thing they do to save on water

um is they have incredibly concentrated urine um the kidneys of a camel produce very, very dark, concentrated urine with not an awful lot of water content compared to other creatures. And therefore, when they pee, they don't pee a lot, and that saves water. They also have things in their nose so that they don't actually breathe out water vapour. Oh, really? They recycle the water vapour before it gets out of their body, things in their nose so they don't actually breathe out water vapor oh really they they recycle the water vapor before it gets out of their body and it's kind of reabsorbed oh that's genius isn't it yeah how interesting and they can talking of their noses um you know you imagine like the camels in a sandstorm yes they can close their eyes because they've got three eyelids they

have haven't they they've got their third eyelid sort of goes sideways. Yes, like a windscreen wiper. Like a windscreen wiper, yeah, to help protect them from the sand. Yes, so they can close their eyes, but they can also close their nostrils so that sand doesn't go up their nose. That's very clever, isn't it? Yeah. Their feet are particularly good for use in sand.

They're sort of quite large and spread. They sort of consist of two toes. And they sort of distribute the weight quite evenly over a wide area in order to not sink. And they can put up with very high temperatures as well. So they can walk on very hot sand yeah and and be fine with that yeah i mean they're very pretty as well they're quite cute aren't they with those big long eyelashes that make them look all sweet and dopey well you can make them prettier how uh botox um okay not what i was expecting no well there's a thing there's a thing there's there's a beauty competition for camels in alfara okay okay and um in 2018 uh 12 camels were disqualified from the beauty competition uh for using botox oh dear and you hit why on earth would you like try and make your camel prettier by just

injecting it with botox well the first prize in this beauty contest is 3.7 million pounds oh my goodness well that explains why yeah crikey where is this held? In Saudi Arabia. Wow. How interesting. Yeah. It's quite a thing. I mentioned the beauty competition. There are other sorts of competition as well.

There are racing. Yes, of course. Camel racing. They can go up to about 40k, about sort of like 20 23 24 miles an hour they're not bad are they i i read that they can um the the fastest camel recorded um did a short sprint of 40 miles per hour 40 miles an hour yeah wow yeah that's super quick average you know the average speed over a long distance race is 25 miles per hour but yes even still that's you know that's pretty good but there are i mean excuse me for saying this but there are camel jockeys yes there are and i do mean

people who ride camels for a living in races that's what i assumed you meant yes yes um but they're not always people are they not no well that uh they're sometimes smaller people like children yes like small boys yes and they'll generally be Velcroed to the seat. Really? Yes. So they don't fall off. Okay. Because the way a camel moves would tend to buck a rider off.

Okay. So generally the riders are Velcroed to the seats. Right. And sometimes they're not actually human at all. Sometimes they're robots actually human at all um sometimes they're robots ah right in the in the uae that they actually use robots on on racing camels yes now i heard about this there's a reason for this so um there's the uae banned the use of children under the age of 15 as jockeys in 2002. Essentially, there was quite a lot of human trafficking going on.

People were abducting children from here, there and everywhere to make them ride camels. Firstly, they were treating the kids very badly. They were also treating the camels very badly. And so the UAE banned the use of child jockeys. Adults are too big and bulky to really use, so that's why the robotic camel jockey came along. Goodness. Well, there you go.

So it's a positive thing then? Yes, it's a positive step. Yes, absolutely. That's great. Talking about other jobs, I mean, apart from being, you know, raced. Yes. There are other jobs that camels have traditionally done. So in Kenya, they used to have a mobile library on the back of a camel. Did they?

Yes. How fascinating. So the mobile library, you know, normally we've got sort of old loot and vans and stuff that go sort of converted. They had camels. Oh, that's great. That's great. Which is quite cool.

And in the 1800s, in 1855, the American military decided that camels might be a good idea for them. Oh, really? And they bought 35 camels might be a good idea for them. Oh really? And they bought 35 camels and they employed 5 drivers for the camels. It cost them about £30,000 in 1855

Oh my goodness. That's a lot of money It's a lot of money isn't it? Wow You can play polo on a camel You can? Camel polo. Just doesn't sound like a real thing, does it? No, it doesn't.

Camel polo, very big in Dubai. Well, in Saudi Arabia, anywhere that sort of has benefited from oil and all the riches that exist in that neck of the woods. They have these you know really really sort of big pristine royalty laden camel polo matches wow which um presumably you'd have to have a much longer stick yes i was just gonna say yeah presumably you have to have a much longer mallet than regular horse polo because you're that much higher up off the ground brilliant brilliant I also tried to look into the use of camels in war

oh okay because generally they're good beasts of burden so yes I have seen pictures with Lawrence in Arabia using camels yes for various attacks on trains and things yes yes um but in in the second world war apparently german tank drivers would aim specifically for camel droppings right because

they they reckon driving over camel droppings was good luck fantastic so the africa corps and rommel and all that stuff would would go out of their way for a bit of camel droppings that's wonderful talking of pictures of camels yes um i uh i was involved with a with a photographic exhibition called the earth from the air you were it was very. I went to see it. And one of the pictures that was one of the very most popular pictures was a picture of camels taken from above.

That's right. But with the sun making the shadows of the camels. So you didn't actually see the camels, unless you looked really hard, you wouldn't see the camels. You'd just see the shadows of the camels. Yes. And the perspective was such that the shadows looked like they were camels fromels from the side yeah yes exactly but the other place where you where you see a picture of a camel is on the side of a packet of cigarettes i knew you were going to say that yes

i was thinking about camel cigarettes yeah yeah so the reynolds company rj reynolds yeah decided to launch the very first uh pre-packaged pack of cigarettes in a paper wrapping. Oh, really? And camels were the first ones that they did. And they launched them because at that time, Turkish and Egyptian tobacco was like super cool. It's a bit like in my youth, people used to smoke sort of jetan or galois, which was seen as kind of artistic. Okay. People used to smoke sort of jetan or galois, which was seen as kind of artistic. That's okay, okay.

Whereas in 1913, it was very popular to smoke Egyptian or Turkish tobacco. Yes. And camel cigarettes were made with Turkish tobacco. Oh, I see. So they smelt slightly differently. Yeah, a bit more exotic. I mean, they sponsored Formula One racing for years and years and years. They sponsored all sorts of people. The camel on the front of a packet of camels is actually a zoo camel they

they took it out of a zoo to take a photograph of it oh really yeah oh i think it's still the same camel that they took a photograph of in in 1913 i thought you were going to say it was still the same camel in the zoo that would be a very old camel wouldn't it yeah what is it i'd walk a mile for a camel was that the slogan that was the slogan i mean ex-adman yeah it's always going to be slow of course of course you mentioned briefly um camels in egypt there i i read that um because i'd sort of discovered that they originally came from north america and that just got me interested in how did they get to all the other other places you so associate them with the with the sahara and the middle east and you know all this sort of stuff um apparently camels

first came into egypt around 670 bc where a chap i hope i'm going to pronounce this correctly the assyrian emperor esar hadonhaddon invaded Egypt in 670 BC. And a whole load of Arabian chieftains gifted him a bunch of their local camels in order to assist his armies in carrying their stuff across the desert into Egypt. And then once they got there, they just sort of stayed there. They kept them and they bred them. And that's how you got camels in Egypt yeah and it's such a it's such an association now isn't it you think about sort of you know trekking around looking at the pyramids and the sphinx and all that sort of stuff

in my mind at least there's always a camel involved somewhere yes there's always a camel trek across the desert um yeah they they came there as a result of that invasion. We had an episode on type some time ago. Yes. And there's a thing called camel case. Oh, is there? Okay. So camel case is very simple.

Camel case is where you have a capital letter inside a word. Okay. So, for example, YouTube is cap Y, cap T, but it's still one word, YouTube. Oh, I see, yes. FedEx is cap F, cap E. Yes. All those things. And that's called camel case.

Is it? Yeah. Do we know why? No. I'm going to choose to believe that you could picture the capital letter of the first part of the word and the capital letter in the middle part of the word as two humps, like what you get on a camel. Or as a head and a hump.

Yes. That's what I'm going to choose to believe. Yes, of course. Let's believe that. I mean, another word that has that is camelback, you know, the drinking bottle. No, I'm not familiar with that. Go on. Are you not? No. Okay. So there's a thing called a camelback. know the um the drinking bottle no i'm not familiar with that go on are you not no okay so there's a thing called a camel i should go and get you one i've got one

downstairs you've got one of course you've got one you know when uh you see people uh like um cyclists or or people who go on treks and they have like a tube going into their mouth from a from a water oh yes from a there's a bottle in their backpack. Yeah, and often it's like a sack. It's like a plastic bladder that holds the water. Well, the company that invented those is, actually it was a guy called Michael Edison invented this thing called the Camelbak.

So C-A-M-E-L-B-A-K. And he was taking part in an event called Hotter Than Hell 100, which is in Wichita Falls in Texas. And he basically, he was an emergency medical technician. Right. And he thought, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take an IV bag from hospital, fill it with water, put it in a tube sock,

stick it in a backpack and have like the tube from the IV drip coming to my mouth with like a peg to hold it shut. That's brilliant, yeah. And that became the camelback. It makes perfect sense to me. Oh, do you know a female camel is called a git a git yes really yes it's probably in in arabic it's probably sort of a hip or something but it's it's sure it's a git oh do you know where they spit no go on why why why do gits spit so so camel gets spit when they're upset angry um scared yeah it's it's it's a it's just a reaction to uh to a bad environment okay so anybody who says they've been spat on by a

camel it's because the camel's upset for some reason okay so it is i'd always assumed it was sort of a natural i don't know regurgitatory process or something you just happen to be in the way but it is actually a response it is actually a similar reason why a human might spit yes yeah exactly how interesting uh and and and they froth up as well camels they get this like froth around their mouths when they also when they're making that horrible sort of noise yes um but at that one point it was believed that that froth was actually a contraceptive and right i certainly think if i saw a woman drinking that i would definitely not want to go any further it would work i guess so you're saying that people actually took camel spit as a contraceptive oh yeah oh humans a funny bunch we'll we'll try and it's like

there's there's like contraceptives and hairy growth people will try anything yes yeah i'm just sort of picturing this this uh sort of classic american horkster you know roll up roll up come and try dr pennington's genuine camel spit for regrowth and contraception. He just happens to be the owner of the largest camel herd in America. So, you know the Silk Road? We're talking about camels in the Arabic countries, but also there are loads of camels in China. Yes. So the Silk Road is a very popular tourist destination.

Right, okay. In May, especially. People either walk it or they take a camel because that's an easy way to get to your destination. Yes. So during the month of May, there's a place called the Mingxia Mountain and the Crescent Spring, which are scenic spots in China's Kumtang Desert. Right. And local authorities see a lot of camel traffic going through

because it's a big thing. I mean, there's, you know, I'm talking about like two and a half thousand camels. Two and a half thousand camels? Yes, doing this trip. And tens of thousands of people on foot. and the trouble is that there's a point where the camel trail crosses the walkers trail right okay so how do you think you would make sure that the walkers could get between the camels um oh i don't know red flags horns dry traffic lights there are camel traffic lights in the

middle of a desert in china oh they're really oh yeah i mean not only are they are they they have like a little picture of a camel little red camel little green camel that's amazing i know i know it's ridiculous it's it sounds very strange but there's like on the in 2023 on the first day of May, there were about 10,000 visitors. And there were about 20,000 visitors over the following days in the spring holiday. Right. That's wonderful. Now, I mean, that is quite a lot of camels. Every year there's an event in Saudi Arabia arabia called the crown prince's camel festival

okay there are parades there are sporting events there are races there's polo there's beauty competitions it doesn't say so but if you were going to have one anywhere it would probably be there wouldn't it um and it's a very a very big event uh you. Hundreds and hundreds of camels taking part in each individual event. And this event holds the Guinness World Record for the largest number of camels gathered together at a single event. Okay, let me guess. Go on. Most camels. 2,000.

Higher. 3,000. Higher. 13,000. More. 3,000. Higher. 13,000. More or less spot on. 13,377 camels. What? Were paraded at the inaugural

ceremony. 13,000 camels? 13,377. Jeez. And this was last year in 2023. And, you know, they regularly get several thousand camels but in this particular year yeah 13 377 camels goodness me that's not bad is it so bruce do you have any more camel related facts i don't i although i do like a camel

you do i do Do you know what? I started this research thinking, ah, camels, meh. But now, I think camels are pretty special. They're not bad, are they? They're really, really cool things. Fascinating creatures. Yes. Well, my fat reserve of camel facts has run dry.

You've got the hump. I've got the hump. We'll be back-t next week no that's it that's it so there we go that is the end of another wonderful episode of fact orally actually no no but it's not the end it's not the end it's not it's not the end there's more there's there's There's three things. Oh, there's some housekeeping to be done, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

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