1. When I’m hungry, I’ll eat almost anything – a leather bridle, a piece of rope, my master’s tent, or a pair of shoes. My mouth is so tough a thorny cactus doesn’t bother it. I love to chew down grass and other plants that grow here in the Arabian desert.

I’m a dromedary camel, the one-hump kind that lives in hot deserts in the Middle East. My hump, all forty kilograms of it, is filled with fat – my body fuel – not water as some people believe. I evolved it because I wouldn’t always be able to find food. As I travel across the hot sands, when I don’t find any chow, my body automatically takes fat from the hump, feeds my system, and keeps me going strong. This is my emergency food supply.

2. If I can’t find any plants to munch, my body uses up my hump. When the hump gets smaller, it starts to tip to one side. But when I get to a nice oasis and begin to eat again, my hump soon builds back to normal.

I’ve been known to drink twenty-seven gallons of water in ten minutes. In a fantastic way, in a matter of minutes all the water I’ve swallowed travels to the billions of microscopic cells that make up my flesh.

Stenomylus is an extinct genus of miniature camelid native to North America around 30 million years ago. Its name is derived from the Greek στεíνος, “narrow” and μύλος, “molar”.
Stenomylus was extremely diminutive compared to other ancient and modern camelids, standing only 2 feet (61 cm) tall on average. It was a slender animal with a long neck, having some resemblance to a modern gazelle. Unlike modern camelids, Stenomylus lacked padding on its hooves and has been compared to the modern pronghorn of North America and the gerenuk of Africa based on theories about its biomechanics.

3. Naturally, the water I swallow first goes into my stomach. There thirsty blood vessels absorb and carry it to every part of my body. Scientists have tested my stomach and found it empty ten minutes after I’ve drunk twenty gallons. In an eight-hour day, I can carry a four-hundred-pound load a hundred miles across a hot, dry desert and not stop once for a drink or something to eat.

In fact, I’ve been known to go eight days without a drink, but then I look like a wreck. I lose a hundred kilograms, my ribs show through my skin, and I look terribly skinny.
 

But I feel great! I look thin because the billions of cells lose their water. They’re no longer fat. They’re flat.

4. Normally my blood contains 94 percent water, just like yours. But when I can’t find any water to drink, the heat of the sun gradually robs a little water out of my blood. Scientists have found that my blood can lose up to 40 percent of its water, and I’m still healthy. Doctors say human blood has to stay very close to 94 percent water. If you lose 5 percent of it, you can’t see anymore; 10 percent, you can’t hear and you go insane; 12 percent, your blood is as thick as molasses and your heart can’t pump the thick stuff. It stops, and you’re dead.

But that’s not true with me. Why? Scientists say my blood is different. My red cells are elongated. Yours are round. Maybe that’s what makes the difference.
 

This proves I’m designed for the desert, or the desert is designed for me. (Did you ever hear of a design without a designer?)
 

After I find a water hole, I’ll drink for about ten minutes and my skinny body starts to change almost immediately. In that short time my body fills out nicely, I don’t look skinny anymore, and I gain back the hundred kilograms pounds I lost.

5. Even though I lose a lot of water in the desert, my body conserves it too. Way back as I evolved, my nose became specially designed to save water. When I exhale, I don’t lose much. My nose traps that warm, moist air from my lungs and absorbs it in my nasal membranes.

6. Tiny blood vessels in those membranes take that back into my blood. How’s that for a recycling system? Pretty cool, isn’t it. It works because my nose is cool. My cool nose changes that warm moisture in the air from my lungs into water. But how does my nose get cool? I breath in hot dry desert air, and it goes through my wet nasal passages. This produces a cooling effect, and my nose stays as much as 10° C cooler than the rest of my body. I love to travel the beautiful sand dunes. It’s really quite easy, because my feet are specially engineered sand shoes. My hooves are wide, and they get even wider when I step on them. Each foot has two long, bony toes with tough, leathery skin between my soles, My feet are a little like webbed feet.

7. They won’t let me sink into the soft, drifting sand. This is good, because often my master wants me to carry him one hundred miles across the desert in just one day. (I go along at around ten miles an hour.) Sometimes a big windstorm comes out of nowhere, bringing flying sand with it. I’ve got special muscles in my nostrils that close the openings, keeping sand out of my nose but still allowing me enough air to breathe. My eyelashes arch down over my eyes like screens, keeping the sand and sun out but still letting me see clearly. If a grain of sand slips through and gets in my eye, my development took care of that too. I have an inner eyelid that automatically wipes the sand off my eyeball just like a windscreen wiper.

Some people think I’m conceited because I always walk around with my head held high and my nose in the air. But that’s just because of the way I’m made. My eyebrows are so thick and bushy I have to hold my head high to peek out from underneath them. I’m glad I have them though. They shade my eyes from the bright sun.

8. Desert people depend on me for many things. Not only am I their best form of transportation, but I’m also their grocery store.

Mrs. Camel gives very rich milk that people make into butter and cheese.
 

I shed my thick fur coat once a year, and that can be woven into cloth.
 

A few young camels are used for beef, but I don’t like to talk about that.
 

For a long time we camels have been called the “ships of the desert” because of the way we sway from side to side when we trot. Some of our riders get seasick. I sway from side to side because of the way my legs work. Both legs on one side move forward at the same time, elevating that side. My “left, right left, right” motion makes my rider feel like he is in a rocking chair going sideways.

9. When I was six months old, special knee pads started to grow on my front legs. I need them because they help me lower my 500 or 600 kilograms to the ground.
10. If I didn’t have them, my knees would soon become sore and infected, and I could never lie down. I’d die of exhaustion.

11. By the way, I don’t get thick knee pads because I fall on my knees. I fall on my knees because I already have these tough pads.

I’m a very technical, highly engineered, dromedary camel. Things like me don’t just happen, they evolve.