🐪 Camel

• Belongs to family Camelidae which inludes Camel, Llama, Alpaca, Guanaco and Vicuna.
• Originated in North America.

Species

👉🏻 The genus Camelus has two species:

Bactrian Camel

• Camelus bactrianus.
• It has two humps.
• Inhabitant of deserts of central Asia reaching upto Mangolia and western parts of China.
• The bacterian camel is very strongly built and copiously covered with long dark brown hairs on its humps, neck and shoulders, which is essential to Asiatic mountainous terrains which experience extreme low temperature.

Dromedary Camel

• Camelus dromedarius
• It is single humped camel.
• It is widespread throughout the Middle-East, India and North Africa.
• Therefore also knonw as Arabian Camel.

Utility

• Acts as a significant power source specially in deserts. Used by BSF in Rajasthan.
• Milk is valuable product. Contains 5.1% lactose, 4.8% fat, 3.8% protein and 0.9% ash.
• Camel hide is used for making suitcases as well as for large skin recepticles (Kuppas) for storing oils and ghee.
• Used for meat purpose.
• Camel can halt desert’s advance. Unlike cattle and sheep, which graze on the ground vegetal cover and thus expose the precious topsoil to the action of wind and rain, camels brows on the upper storeys of vegetation; they also range more widely while browsing.

Reason for Reducing Population

• Long gestation period 390 days (average).
• Cow camel gives birth to one calf at a time and breeds once in 2 years.
• Abortion is common in Indian camel due to either Trypanosomiasis (Surra disease) or scarcity of food.

- G.C. Banerjee: A Textbook of Animal Husbandry
- https://agritech.tnau.ac.in/
- https://www.breedslist.com/
- https://nbagr.icar.gov.in/
- Wikipedia