CAMEL, the name applied to the two species of the genus Camelus of the order Artiodactyla (q.v.). Of the two species, C. dromedarius, the Arabian camel, is larger and has only one hump, while the Bactrian camel, C. bactrianus, has two. The Bactrian camel is shorter legged and more ponderous and grows a long, thick winter coat, which it sheds in masses in the spring.
Its native home is central Asia, where it occurs in a wild state in the deserts of eastern Turkistan between the Altyntagh mountains and the Tarim river. The wild form, however, differs in several respects from the domestic breed, and is more similar in many ways to the fossil C. knoblochi from Russia and C. alutensis from Rumania. The domestic variety of C. bactrianus is the most important beast of burden in eastern Turkistan and Mongolia.
The Arabian camel is unknown in the wild state and is evidently one of the oldest of domestic animals. It will carry a load of 500 to I ,goo lb. 25 miles a day for three days without drinking. This and similar feats are rendered possible by the peculiar formation of the stomach of both species (see PECORA). The widespreading, soft feet are admirably adapted for walking on yielding sand.
During the rutting season the male camel is very savage, utter ing a loud bubbling roar and fight ing fiercely with its fellows.
The tameness of the camel is es sentially the tameness of stupi dity. Sir F. Palgrave writes, "He is from first to last an un domesticated and savage animal, rendered serviceable by stupidity alone, without much skill on his master's part or any co-operation on his own, save that of an extreme passiveness. Neither attach ment nor even habit impress him ; never tame, though not wide awake enough to be exactly wild." The food of the camel consists of the leaves of trees and shrubs. The female produces one young at a birth, after I 1 months' gestation. The mother suckles her offspring for a year and the latter does not reach maturity until its sixteenth or seventeenth year, living until it is forty or fifty. (See TYLOPODA.)