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AnimalsTranscript
00:00 From beating up other animals
00:01 to showing weird things to other males,
00:03 here are 15 interesting facts about camels
00:06 you might not know.
00:08 Why camels show this to other males?
00:10 The ship of the desert, or whatever you wanna call them,
00:13 camels are weird little things.
00:15 Just take this for example.
00:17 What in the world is that,
00:18 and why would they show this to other males?
00:21 What's even more surprising about them
00:23 is that they like to eat cacti,
00:25 even though it hurts their mouth.
00:27 On top of that, these daredevils
00:28 are the sort of animals we don't have much use for anymore.
00:31 That's to say, we have dirt bikes and jeeps
00:34 to get across sandy regions these days.
00:36 So now these animals are even used to camel wrestling.
00:40 How does that work, you ask?
00:41 Well, keep watching to find out.
00:43 Camel eating cactus.
00:45 We all read that camels are the ships of the desert,
00:49 says kids, and that they store water in their humps,
00:52 but what else do we know about them?
00:54 Not much.
00:55 Did you know that they can eat thorns?
00:57 Now why didn't they teach that to us in school?
01:00 They need to get water from any source they can,
01:03 so eating cactus might be a good thing,
01:05 but there are so many complications to that.
01:07 It even hurts them to eat cactus thorns.
01:10 However, they're little daredevils
01:12 and they don't mind the pain
01:13 since they have a high pain tolerance.
01:15 Moreover, they have a papillae structure
01:17 that helps them chew a cactus
01:19 so that their thorns don't poke them too much.
01:22 These structures are made of the same things as nails
01:25 and that are paired with their strong jaw and teeth.
01:28 They grind cacti enough so that it doesn't hurt too much.
01:31 Camels also rotate the cacti while eating them
01:34 so the needles slide into their throats vertically
01:37 rather than horizontally.
01:38 Evolution saw that they find cacti really delicious,
01:41 so it gave them a really hard top palate.
01:44 Have you ever seen a camel chew from side to side?
01:47 Well, the reason is that they're not trying
01:48 to have a sword fight in their mouths.
01:50 Pretending and deceit during love.
01:54 Don't be surprised if your perspective on camels changes
01:57 after hearing this fact.
01:59 Despite their calm nature, they have bursts of anger too.
02:02 In fact, a UAE scientific journal
02:09 shows that they can even be deceitful.
02:12 Even the scientist was surprised to see such weird behavior.
02:15 Most other animals don't pretend.
02:17 When they need something such as a mate, they go for it.
02:21 But sometimes male camels will play hard to get.
02:24 All this started when a farmer started hearing
02:26 distress sounds at night and couldn't understand
02:29 why his camels were so noisy.
02:31 So the researcher recorded much of the nighttime.
02:34 Then they found out that many camels would pretend
02:37 that they were sleeping next to a female.
02:39 They would stop chewing and even ruminating
02:41 and just wait for the female to sleep quietly.
02:44 They would then break this false sense of security
02:46 by trying to forcefully make love
02:48 with the female right there.
02:50 Much of the time, the females wouldn't accept it
02:52 and they fought back too.
02:54 Finally, after too much force, they would look back
02:56 and bite them in the front of the neck.
02:58 Completely justified, right?
03:00 But here's the twist.
03:02 This would only happen when they were first kept in farms
03:05 under the control of human beings.
03:07 Usually this energy would be placed into finding food.
03:10 But since they get their food on a platter easily,
03:13 the males needed to get rid of all this free energy somehow.
03:16 So naturally, they chose violence.
03:20 Camel humps don't have water in them.
03:23 The humps on a camel are very distinguishing
03:25 and you probably think they're wobbly
03:27 since there's water stored in there.
03:29 But oh boy, you'd be wrong.
03:32 The hump doesn't have water,
03:33 but it's the reason they can roam around the desert
03:36 without dying.
03:37 Inside their hump is a whole bunch of fat.
03:40 They can metabolize the fat in the hump
03:42 to get some nutrients.
03:44 One of the byproducts of burning the fat is water,
03:47 which then promptly enters their bloodstream,
03:49 ultimately saving them from dehydration.
03:52 This sort of shrinks or melts down the hump.
03:55 This part of their body also helps in temperature regulation.
03:58 At night, the temperature can drop by a lot,
04:01 but by concentrating the fat tissue on the back hump,
04:04 these creatures can minimize the heat insulation effect.
04:08 All the unwanted heat is dissipated
04:10 to the rest of the body so they don't freeze to death.
04:12 During this time, they also slow their metabolism,
04:15 which helps them reduce their temperature
04:17 to even lower than that of a human.
04:19 The extra heat is dissipated
04:21 when it's nice and bright outside
04:23 and the body remains cool.
04:24 Pink organ in their mouth.
04:27 The one hump camel is definitely
04:29 the freaky one in the desert.
04:31 They have some of the weirdest lovemaking practices
04:33 you can imagine.
04:35 For example, Arabian camels can blow up a portion
04:38 of their soft palate with air
04:40 and then hang that disgusting little organ
04:42 out of their mouth.
04:43 All of this to attract the ladies?
04:46 Are you even sure that the ladies like this?
04:48 To be honest, even scientists are very confused
04:50 about how camels puff up the diverticulum.
04:53 Whatever case it is, they blow up their gross (beep)
04:56 hanging out of their mouth and start the courtship.
04:59 First, they make a gurgling sound using their spit.
05:01 If you think that's gross, just wait
05:04 because it only gets worse.
05:05 Next, they rub the spit on their own neck
05:08 to mark their territory.
05:09 This also happens to be where the pole glands lie,
05:12 which produces a foul, foul brown goo.
05:15 Brace yourself because even pee is involved here.
05:18 Then their tails are drowsed in their urine.
05:21 All of this is done to attract the ladies
05:23 with their female-attracting pheromones.
05:26 Whatever you do, do not go near a camel
05:28 during its courtship process, or even if it's in heat.
05:31 Even then, the females aren't impressed.
05:34 If their disgusting meatball trick doesn't work,
05:36 the females will base their choice
05:38 on the status of the male.
05:39 The one with the stronger combat power
05:41 will win and get the last.
05:44 Generally, 10 to 20 partners will fight with each other.
05:47 Sometimes camels hurt their inflatable organ quite badly,
05:51 and in some cases, they might even have to be removed.
05:53 It doesn't affect the body much,
05:55 but it does affect their heart.
05:57 This reduces their chance of getting a girlfriend,
05:59 and they probably will die alone,
06:02 and it will be the farmer's fault.
06:03 Camel milk as a delicacy.
06:07 Have you ever had camel milk?
06:09 With so many cows and plant-based milks available,
06:12 you might not have thought about trying it,
06:15 but it has some crazy benefits.
06:17 If you're a dairy fanatic,
06:18 but you suffer from lactose intolerance,
06:20 then camel milk might just become your best friend.
06:24 This intolerance comes from a shortage of lactase,
06:27 the enzyme that digests milk sugars.
06:30 Thankfully, camel's milk has much less of this sugar,
06:33 making it more digestible comparatively.
06:35 Can you believe that this milk has been used
06:37 to treat diarrhea caused by rotavirus
06:39 for hundreds of years too?
06:41 Much like every delicacy,
06:43 this doesn't come without leaving a dent in your wallet.
06:46 Camels only produce milk after giving birth,
06:48 and since their pregnancies last for 13 months,
06:51 production time is a lot.
06:53 You might not be able to make it a monthly habit,
06:56 but having a glass of it once in a while
06:58 might be beneficial for you.
06:59 Their ancestors.
07:02 Okay, here are a few facts we all know about camels.
07:06 They have humps, they're huge,
07:08 and they're found in the Middle East.
07:10 Now let us show you how far these animals have come.
07:13 The first ever camels were known as protolopis,
07:16 and they emerged about 40 to 50 million years ago.
07:19 And the most shocking part?
07:21 They're the size of a rabbit.
07:23 And they lived in what is known as South Dakota.
07:26 Five million years forward,
07:27 and they're the size of mere goats.
07:30 But now they have more traits of camels and llamas.
07:33 One of them, called stenomelus,
07:35 doesn't even have the iconic camel toes.
07:38 In fact, they walk on their tippy toes.
07:40 The ancestor of the modern camel
07:42 was found 7.5 to 6 1/2 million years ago.
07:46 Unfortunately, the last ever native camels vanished
07:48 along with the mammoth saber-toothed cats
07:51 and many other megafaunas.
07:52 If you go to a museum with a stenomelus skeleton,
07:56 you might just confuse it with a dog skeleton.
07:58 Camel wrestling is a thing.
08:02 One thing about humans is that they'll always find a way
08:06 to entertain themselves.
08:07 In the desert, they find out
08:09 that they could make camels fight.
08:10 And that is where camel wrestling started.
08:13 Actually, in Turkey, they're trained to face each other
08:15 in very stressful situations.
08:18 Camels are pretty calm animals.
08:20 Why would any desert animal spend so much energy
08:23 fighting another of its kind?
08:24 But during lovemaking season, things get restless.
08:27 And that is when the competitions are held.
08:30 Since female camels aren't even allowed at the events,
08:33 the male camels get very riled up
08:35 until the anger builds enough for them to fight.
08:38 At first, camels were super useful to people,
08:40 carrying around crops like figs
08:42 and even serving as transport.
08:44 But we have roads now
08:45 and the camels are more a status symbol.
08:47 So people who were fond of them started raising them
08:50 and boom, it became a local tradition.
08:53 At this point, it's just a reason for the locals
08:56 to get a little tipsy and bet on the strongest one.
08:59 Thankfully, they don't hurt each other
09:00 because their mouths are covered, so no biting.
09:03 If an event like this happened in your city, would you go?
09:06 Camels don't sweat or pee.
09:10 Camels have extremely dry fur,
09:13 so most people thought that they just didn't sweat.
09:16 But the truth is far from that.
09:18 Camels do have sweat glands
09:19 that are distributed everywhere under their skin.
09:22 In fact, their sweat removes the same amount
09:24 of body heat as humans.
09:26 Their fur does a lot more than just look pretty shiny.
09:29 Usually their coat is about four inches thick,
09:31 which helps keep the heat out
09:33 and insulate it more than anything.
09:36 Moreover, its color is light enough
09:38 to reflect off light energy and reduce heat transfer.
09:42 The fur is so good at reducing heat
09:44 because it uses all three heat transfer methods
09:46 to disperse heat.
09:48 Now, you would know what these three types were
09:50 if you paid attention in physics class.
09:52 Even the trapped air in their fur serves as a thin material
09:55 to minimize the transfer by condition.
09:58 Since breathing also takes some water,
10:00 their nasal passages conserve water
10:02 by not losing much water vapor during exhaling.
10:06 Their nasal passages are pretty dry,
10:08 but there's no need for you to check that yourself.
10:11 Since water conservation is so important to these mammals,
10:14 even their pee is highly concentrated.
10:16 Did you know that they can even drink water
10:18 more concentrated than seawater?
10:21 Even the plants they feed on are more on the saltier side.
10:24 Well, let's just hope they're not prone
10:25 to high blood pressure.
10:26 Camel spitting.
10:30 We explained why camels need to conserve water and how much,
10:34 but these are very complex animals.
10:36 They have a bad habit of spitting a lot.
10:39 Doesn't that make a lot of saliva too?
10:41 The truth is camels don't really care about that.
10:43 They're super territorial.
10:45 Even though they might look calm,
10:47 they can get really aggressive,
10:49 and when they feel threatened,
10:50 they will spit at each other, sometimes even at humans.
10:54 We're not done yet.
10:55 They'll spit up whenever they're excited too.
10:58 You can only guess what they're feeling at that time,
11:00 but you can guess when they're about to spit at you.
11:02 Their cheeks usually puff up,
11:04 and they vomit up saliva and stomach contents.
11:08 So technically, it's not just saliva,
11:10 it's also a lot of their digested food,
11:12 all mixed together to create an awful odor.
11:15 Like cows, camels are ruminants too.
11:18 This means they can regurgitate food back up
11:20 just to annoy others in the herd.
11:23 Weirdly enough, this behavior is learned.
11:26 If you have a camel in captivity,
11:28 try not to teach it this disgusting habit,
11:30 or you might just end up drowsed in foul vomit.
11:33 They like music.
11:35 Even in the desert, camels know how to have fun.
11:39 Other than cows, they're one of the animals
11:41 that know how to enjoy music.
11:43 In 1911, Irwin conducted an experiment
11:46 where a gramophone was played around a zoo
11:48 to many different animals.
11:50 Of course, some of them didn't care,
11:52 and some of them acted hostile.
11:54 But the camel?
11:55 These creatures were very pleasantly surprised by the music
11:58 and wanted to rub their face against the instrument.
12:01 How cute.
12:02 Moreover, the Bedouins have been known to sing to them
12:05 just to get them going.
12:06 In fact, there were special camel drivers chants
12:09 just to get them to walk faster.
12:11 And the result?
12:12 Well, it worked.
12:13 A camel owner once brought a camel to a festival,
12:16 and people thought it was animal abuse.
12:18 But the woman said that they had no idea
12:20 what they were talking about
12:22 because the animals actually loved listening to jazz
12:25 or even drums and bass.
12:27 So if you ever want to steal a camel or two,
12:29 just play some tunes
12:30 and you'll see them walking towards you.
12:32 But you didn't hear that from us.
12:34 Camels hold grudges.
12:37 Camels and humans share a lot of qualities.
12:41 One of them is holding grudges.
12:43 Sure, humans do it more efficiently and frequently than them,
12:46 but who knows how well camels remember other people's doings.
12:50 A camel who's just been injured by someone
12:52 will take his merry time to take their sweet revenge.
12:55 If you find a camel targeting you specifically
12:58 with kicks and bites,
12:59 then think long and hard about what you did.
13:02 Wilford Thixer told Arabian Sands
13:04 that it's all in how you treat them.
13:06 Then he gave them an example of a camel owner
13:08 whose camel was attached to her like a dog.
13:11 Sometimes it would sniff at her and show affection,
13:13 but these animals have the same IQ rating
13:16 as an eight-year-old,
13:17 which gives them a very good understanding of many emotions.
13:20 Sometimes they can be hard to train
13:22 because they're typically undomestic,
13:24 but thanks to their intelligence,
13:25 they can remember a lot
13:27 and even remember those who caused them pain.
13:29 Their name.
13:31 The word camel is an Arabic word meaning beauty.
13:36 While at first glance,
13:37 beauty is not what comes to one's mind,
13:39 camels are generally graceful and big-hearted creatures.
13:43 In the United Arab Emirates,
13:44 the annual Al-Dhafra Camel Festival
13:47 sees thousands of camels compete
13:49 for the beauty contest title.
13:51 (explosion booms)
13:52 Build for the desert.
13:54 Being the ships of the desert,
13:57 one expects camels to be immune
13:58 to the harsh climactic conditions of the desert.
14:01 We've seen that the camel humps have no water in them,
14:04 so how do camels manage to survive?
14:07 Firstly, apart from their capability
14:09 to eat thorns such as cactus,
14:11 scientists discovered that camels
14:12 have oval-shaped red blood cells.
14:15 While the normal red blood cells
14:16 are biconcave, discoid in shape,
14:18 the oval-shaped ones in camels
14:20 help continue blood flow even in the body
14:23 when the water is scarce.
14:24 Additionally, camels are sandstorm-proof.
14:27 They're capable of shutting their nostrils
14:29 to stop sand from getting into their nose.
14:31 They also have small and hairy ears
14:34 that keep sand and dust away.
14:36 Their eyelashes come in sets of two and three eyelids
14:39 that help keep the eyes sand-proof.
14:42 Have you ever tried walking on sand?
14:44 How difficult was it?
14:45 Did you sink?
14:46 Camels are equipped with large, flat feet
14:49 that prevent them from sinking in the sand.
14:51 The thick pads on their knees, chest, and skin
14:54 protect them from the hot sand of the desert.
14:57 Camels aren't as slow as they appear.
15:00 While camels appear to be moving in slow motion
15:03 almost every time, they're actually pretty fast.
15:07 If need be, camels are capable of running at speeds
15:09 as high as 65 kilometers per hour,
15:12 which equals the speed of a racehorse.
15:15 When walking, camels can go as fast as 40 kilometers
15:18 per hour, which is quite impressive compared
15:20 to the human speed of 3.1 miles per hour,
15:23 or even a cow's 4.5 kilometers per hour.
15:26 Camels are much more aggressive than they look.
15:30 Though they generally love to keep things to themselves,
15:34 these massive creatures can become quite aggressive,
15:36 particularly during the mating season.
15:39 Male camels are known to fight,
15:41 and the scars on their body are enough proof.
15:43 They are capable of kicking in circular motions.
15:47 These kicks are powerful enough to rupture ribs
15:49 and other internal organs of the victim.
15:51 Armed with 34 teeth, camels have been known to bite,
15:55 lift, shake, and then throw other animals
15:57 on the ground when agitated.
15:58 Annually during the lovemaking season,
16:01 it's been reported that 15 to 20 humans
16:03 end up being victims of these bites.
16:05 In one similar case, an Indian man in 2016
16:09 had to run for his life when his own camel
16:11 ran out of control.
16:13 25 villagers then rolled into action
16:15 for a total of six hours to get the camel under control.
16:19 So be careful before petting any of these
16:21 massive beasts of the desert.
16:24 All right, comment down below
16:25 if you've ever had a risky camel experience.
16:28 Don't forget to like the video
16:30 and subscribe to Forever Green,
16:32 and we'll see you in the next one.
16:33 (gentle music)
16:36 (gentle music)
16:39 [MUSIC PLAYING]