Camels are not just desert survivors but biological marvels that defy conventional mammalian biology through extreme adaptations, originating from North America and possessing unique traits that enable them to thrive in harsh environments and even influence human history.
Mind Map
Click to expand
Click to explore the full interactive mind map • Zoom, pan, and navigate
Picture this. You're watching a nature
documentary about the Sahara Desert. And
it's 48° C or 118 degrees Fahrenheit and
sunny. The kind of day that makes
asphalt bubble and car tires explode.
Every living thing is either dead,
dying, or desperately hiding
underground. And then the camera pans to
this absolute unit just standing there,
not panting, not sweating, not even
looking mildly inconvenienced, just
vibing in conditions that would turn
most mammals into beef jerky within
hours. And obviously this is the camel.
And before you roll your eyes thinking,
I already know everything there is to
know about the camel, water humps and
all, let me just stop you right there.
Because literally everything you think
you know about camels is wrong. They
don't store water in their humps. They
did not evolve in the desert. And
they're not even particularly good at
being normal mammals. What they are is
nature's middle finger to the laws of
biology in animals so thoroughly bizarre
that we're still discovering new ways in
which it breaks the rules. And I'm not
talking about small rule breaks here and
there. I'm talking about an animal that
can lose 30% of its body weight in water
and keep walking. Which to put that into
perspective, most mammals die at 15%.
I'm talking about an animal that can
drink 114 L of water in one sitting
without going into a coma. To which
you'd be lucky to get to 7 L without
dying. I'm talking about an animal whose
blood cells are in the wrong shape,
whose antibodies have decided to ditch
500 million years of evolution, and
whose body temperature swings by 6° C
every day just because it can't be
bothered to sweat for the quote unquote
little things like that. And here's the
first mind-blower. Camels are not from
the Middle East or Africa or anywhere
sandy for that matter. These supposed
desert animals actually started their
journey in, wait for it, North America.
Yes, you heard that right. While our
ancestors weren't even yet a twinkle in
evolution's eye, proto camels were
chilling what's now Nebraska, probably
complaining about the weather. And we're
talking way back, like 50 million years
ago back during the eosene. And the
earliest camel ancestors, animals like
Protilopus were about the size of a
beagle, not the massive humped beasts we
know of today. But over millions of
years, they evolved, diversified, and
spread across the continent, getting not
just bigger, but also weirder. And by
the mayio scene, you had creatures like
Apic camelis roaming about, which was
basically a giraffe cosplaying as a
camel with legs so long it'd make any
Instagram model jealous. But the real
plot twist came around 6 to 7 million
years ago when these American camelids
decided to take a road trip across the
bearing land bridge back when it was
actually land and not, you know, the
straight. And this wasn't some max
exodus. It was more like a slow
migration that took thousands of years
with some going to Asia and becoming the
camels we know today while others
decided to go to South America a bit
later on and become llamas, apacas,
peunas, and guanos. And then in classic
quadinary extinction fashion, the North
American camels, the originals, went
completely extinct about 10,000 years
ago, likely from a combination of
climate change and humans showing up
with pointy sticks. So while their
cousins were conquering deserts and
mountains elsewhere, the American camels
just well died. But like I said, this
wasn't the end of the line as some
camels went to Asia and other camelids
went to South America. And the split
between camels and their South American
cousins actually happened about 17
million years ago before everyone
decided to leave North America, which in
evolutionary terms is a long time ago.
That's like your last common ancestor
with a chimp plus another 11 million
years for good measure. And normally
when animal populations split for that
long, they can't breed anymore. The
genetic door, so to speak, basically
slams shut with them having different
chromosomes, incompatible DNA, the whole
we've grown apart thing, etc. It's why
you can't breed a line with a domestic
cat, even though they're both mammals of
the same general lineage. But camels,
well, camels looked at those rules and
said, "Nah, this is Alabama." Because
the one humped dramadary, i.e. Camelas
drooadarius and the two humped bactrion
camelless bactrionis can still make
babies together. These hybrids called
boots usually have one weird lopsided
hump with a dip in the middle. And
they're actually prized in some regions
because they're bigger than both parents
kind of like liers and thus can carry
heavier loads. And that's crazy and all,
but both of these guys are camels,
meaning they've only been split for 5
million years. You know, no biggie. But
in 1998, scientists at the Camel
Reproduction Center in Dubai, because
yes, that's a real place, decided to see
just how far they could push this. And
what they did was take a female llama
and artificially inseminate her with
dramadary camel sperm. The result, a
creature they called a kama. And the
kama has no hump, a face that couldn't
decide if it was a camel or llama, and
legs that were somewhere in between,
while also having a temperament, which I
quote was a behavioral disappointment.
But the important thing to note here is
that this is 17 million years of
separation. And yet it still worked. And
that's pretty wild and all, but just
their extensive breeding abilities
doesn't really address the insanity that
dark camels. And a good example of this
is the third player in the camel game
that everyone seems to forget about, the
wild bactran camel, i.e. Camelis Ferris.
Now these guys live in the Gobi Desert
of Mongolia and China. And they're not
just ferro domestic camels, despite what
their species name might have you
believe. They're instead a completely
separate species to the domestic
Bactrian camel. And how separate, you
ask? Well, they split from the ancestral
population of the Bactreans about 1.1
million years ago and have been doing
their own thing ever since. And boy,
have they been doing some weird things.
For one, wild bacterans can drink salt
water. Not just slightly brackish water,
but legitimate salt water that would
send most mammals into kidney failure.
They're also critically endangered with
only 950 left in the wild, making them
rarer than giant pandas. But apparently
nobody cares about saving questionably
looking animals. So while pandas get all
the conservation money and cute
merchandise, wild backs are out here
drinking poison water and wondering
where their PR team went. However, I am
dropping a link to a conservation group
down below. So check that out. But
anyways, this ability to drink water is
just the tip of the iceberg when it
comes to camel survival. And there's a
lot more that goes into it which lets
them survive in places that look like
Mars but hotter and with things that
want to eat you. And first up is that
coat. Now, you'd normally think an
animal living in the desert would want
less fur, not more. And that's logical
and pretty much what any reasonably
large animal would do. But camels aren't
reasonable. They're camels. So, instead,
they rock a thick, shaggy coat that
would make a yak jealous. But here's the
genius part. It's not actually keeping
heat in. It's keeping heat out. You see,
the fur works like the world's best
thermos, except instead of keeping your
coffee hot, keeps the camel's body cool.
And it's so effective that if you shave
a camel, they have to sweat 50% more
just to avoid overheating. And then on
top of that, in the summer, the fur even
changes to a lighter color to reflect
more sunlight. Then there are the legs.
As you can probably see, camel legs are
comedically long. But this isn't an
aesthetic flaw. It's a functional
feature because when the ground
temperature hits 70° C or 158 degrees
Fahrenheit, hot enough to literally cook
an egg, having your body farther from
the sand can mean the difference between
survival, and becoming a well fried egg.
But my favorite adaptation is what
scientists call the pedestal, which kind
of works like how you'd expect with a
name like that. You see, when camels lie
down, they don't just flop under the
sand like your uncle at the beach. They
instead have this thick hardened pad on
their chest that props their body up,
creating an air gap underneath, allowing
air to circulate under the body and
cooling them down without any effort.
But surviving in the desert isn't just
about what you're wearing. It's also
about what you eat, or rather can eat.
So, let me ask you this. Do you know
what grows in the desert? Well, the
answer here is not much. And what does
grow usually comes with thorns, spines,
needles, or other plant-based defense
systems that basically say, "Do not eat
me." And yet, camels eat them anyway.
And I'm not talking about delicately
nibbling around the best parts. I'm
talking about straight up crunching
through thorny branches like their
potato chips. I mean, to put this into
perspective, acacia trees, which have
thorns that can puncture literal car
tires, are basically camel salad. And
their pallet itself is basically
non-existent. At least it would seem so,
seeing that they'll eat dry woody shrubs
that have the nutritional value of
cardboard and the texture of fiberglass
insulation. But this all begs the
question of how. And the answer is more
simple than what you might think, which
is that their mouths and stomachs, are
basically biological tanks. The inside
of their mouth is lined with thick
cone-shaped pap, which kind of look like
hundreds of fleshy spikes that are tough
enough to withstand the thorns, as well
as help direct them down in a vertical
orientation to help avoid getting them
stuck anywhere. And then their lips are
split and extremely mobile, letting them
pick around the worst spines with
surprising delicacy if they really want
to. But when they don't want to, crunch
crunch desert salad. And speaking of
crunchy stuff, living in the desert
means sand everywhere. And to get around
sand getting in their sensitive parts,
camels also had to evolve built-in
safety goggles. And by safety goggles, I
mean very long eyelashes and uh three
eyelids. Yeah, three. And the third one
is transparent and sweeps across the eye
horizontally, kind of like a windshield
wiper. And to make it even more OP,
during sandstorms, they can literally
just close the third eyelid and still
see where they're going. And their
nostrils are somehow even more
impressive. Not only can they close them
completely to keep sand out, which I
love to see you try without using your
hands, but the inside is also designed
like a maze of twisted passages. And
this does two things. One, it helps
filter out sand. And two, it also acts
like a moisture reclamation system,
which is a lot more important than it
might sound. But we'll get to that
particular piece of weirdness in a
minute. Now, if you've ever been to a
beach, you'll know that walking on sand
is exhausting. Every step sinks, your
feet shift, and ultimately use twice the
amount of energy to go half the
distance. And don't even get me started
on walking uphill on dunes, which is
probably the closest thing to nature's
treadmill. But camels were rightfully
like, yeah, nah. And solve this problem
by evolving what are essentially
biological snowshoes, or rather sand
shoes. You see, their feet aren't hooves
in their traditional sense, despite what
they might look like. Instead, they have
two-toed feet with soft pads underneath.
And these broad, thick, fatty pads under
the feet spread out slightly when they
walk, distributing their weight over a
larger area, as well as being thick
enough to handle the scorching soft
sand. And the design is so effective
that engineers have actually studied
them to create better rover tires for
future missions to the moon. But just
like rovers, camels are not just
impressive on the outside, but also
under the hood. And this is where they
go from well adapted to downright weird.
Let's start with our blood. You know how
your blood cells are nice round discs
like tiny frisbes floating through your
veins? Well, camel red blood cells
obviously thought that was too
mainstream and so their blood cells are
oval. Now, this might not sound like a
big deal, but imagine trying to push
marbles through a straw versus pushing
elongated pills. When a camel gets
dehydrated, and we're talking scorched
earth, tumble weed blowing through your
veins type of dehydrated, their blood
becomes much thicker due to the lower
water content. And in any other mammal,
these round blood cells would jam up
like rush hour traffic, causing clots,
strokes, and potential death. But oval
cells, well, they just slide on through
like they're on a water slide, even with
the added viscosity of the blood. But
obviously, like any self-respecting
hydrohomie, even though they can deal
with dehydration, they're still big fans
of water. Massive fans, in fact. And
when these guys actually find water,
let's just say they get a bit excited
because the camel will walk up to a
water source and chug it. And I mean
chug, drinking up to 114 L or 30 gallons
in a single session. Which to put that
into perspective is like drinking
basically a bathtub amount of water in
one go. And in literally any other
mammal, this would cause what's called
water intoxication. Your blood sodium
level would dilute so fast that your
cells would swell like water balloons
trying to balance out the hypotonia,
which in turn would cause your brain to
literally swell and uh bad stuff to
happen. But with camels, yeah, they just
kind of burp and walk away like nothing
happened. But honestly, that's nothing.
Remember when I mentioned their nostrils
or moisture reclamation systems? Well,
let's talk about that. Now, for you,
every time you exhale, you lose water
vapor. It's why you can see your breath
on cold days, with it literally being
your body's water floating away. And in
the desert, where water is scarcer than
a PlayStation 5 at launch, losing
moisture with every breath is basically
a death sentence. But camels, following
typical camel fashion, have fixed this.
The inside of their nose is filled with
complex turbineate bones, creating
essentially a labyrinth of passages. And
when they exhale, the warm, moist air
from their lungs hits these cooler
surfaces, which in turn causes water
vapor to condense, kind of like what
happens when you breathe on a cold
window, which thus allows the water to
stay within the camel's body. And this
might not sound all that impressive, but
wait until you hear the fact that this
system is so efficient that the camel
breath basically comes out completely
dry with them reclaiming about 60% of
the moisture from every exhale, helping
to keep them hydrated. And so obviously
staying hydrated would help not only
with circulating your blood and
breathing, but also keeps you well
cooler. But honestly, being unbelievably
hot isn't really a problem for camels,
as camel body temperature can swing by
6° C or 11° F without problem. Now, your
body temperature varies by about 1° C on
a normal day. If it swings 2° C, you're
sick. If it swings 4° C, you're in the
hospital. If it swings 6° C, yeah,
you're dead. But for camels, that's just
another Tuesday. During the cool desert
night, their body temperature drops to
about 34° C or 93° F. And as the day
heats up, instead of immediately
starting to sweat and lose precious
water, they just, well, let their body
temperature rise and rise and rise. And
by the afternoon, they're running at 40°
C or 104° F, a temperature that would
have most mammals in heat stroke. But
here's the genius part. By letting their
body heat up, they delay sweating for
hours. And while other animals are
dumping water from sunrise, camels don't
even start sweating until ambient
temperatures reach around 49° C or 120°
F. And when they do finally sweat, it
evaporates at the skin level rather than
at the surface of the coat. Meaning that
it's the body heat that's getting wicked
away as opposed to the outside air's
heat. And the energy savings of all
these mechanisms are insane. One study
in Australia found that in the desert
where the days reached a temperature of
42° C or 107° F, cattle would lose about
7 to 8% of their body water per day,
while camels only lost 1 to 2%. And in a
situation with no water, the cattle died
within 4 days, while camels made it to
20. And speaking of water conservation,
saving water doesn't just happen through
its front end, but also the back end.
You see, camel pee isn't pee in any
sense that we understand it. It's more
uh akin to syrup. And this is because
their kidneys are so incredibly
efficient at reclaiming water, causing
it to become much thicker than regular.
But the real party trick is the poop, as
camel poop comes out so dry that you can
burn it immediately. In fact, Bedawin
people have been using fresh camel dung
as cooking fuel for hundreds of years.
But just when you thought we were done
with the weird internal stuff, let me
introduce you to camel antibodies. Now,
normal mamalian antibodies are Y-shaped
molecules made of two heavy chains and
two light chains. And they work great.
In fact, they've been working great for
hundreds of millions of years, having
evolved in our earliest ancestors. But
camels, being camels, looked at this
perfectly functional system and decided
to innovate anyway. And about 25 million
years ago, way before they're even
thinking about deserts, camels, well,
the ancestors to camels evolved a second
type of antibbody that nearly everyone
else has missed. And these are called
heavy chain only antibodies or HCABs for
short. And they're just wrong with them
missing the light chains I mentioned
entirely. But these weird antibodies can
actually slip into cracks and crevices
on viruses and bacteria that normal
antibodies can't reach. And they're so
good at their job that scientists are
now studying them for human medicine. I
mean, there are even biotech companies
worth billions of dollars based entirely
on reverse engineering camel antibodies.
Let that sink in. Now, at this point,
you might have realized there's one very
crucial thing that I have not yet talked
about. So, let me address the elephant,
well, camel in the room, the hump. The
thing everyone quote unquote knows about
camels. I mean, people will proudly say
with full confidence at parties, camels
store water in their humps. That's how
they survive in the desert. yada yada
yada. But that is wrong, wrong, and
wrong. If you slice open a camel hump,
which please don't, you won't find a
water balloon, a water tank, or really
anything liquid at all. What you'll find
instead is fat. Just fat. Up to 36 kg or
80 lbs of fat to be precise. And now, if
you corrected that person who so
confidently said that the humps store
water, they might respond with something
like, "But that doesn't make any sense.
Why would you store fat in the desert?
You need water." And that's where they'd
be wrong again. Because camels are
playing 40 chess while everyone else is
playing checkers. You see, their fatty
hump is incredibly useful for three
different reasons. One, fat packs more
than twice the calories per gram as
carbohydrates or protein. Meaning, it's
the most efficient way to store energy,
bar none. Two, when fat breaks down, it
actually produces water as a byproduct.
And for every kilogram of fat
metabolized, a camel gets about 1.1 L of
water. And then three, by concentrating
all their fat in one or two lumps in
their back, camels avoid having it
distributed under their skin where it
would act as insulation, which in turn
would only serve to make them hotter in
an already brutally hot environment. And
so when times are good and food is
plentiful, the hump stands tall and
firm. But when food is scarce, the hump
shrinks and eventually flops to the side
like a deflated balloon. It kind of acts
like a visible fuel gauge, and you can
look at a camel and tell how well it's
been eating by its hump plumpness. Now,
with all this said, survival in the
desert, or really anywhere, isn't just
about pure survival in the sense of my
survival. It's also about the survival
of the species. And in order to
guarantee that, you need to reproduce.
And of course, in typical camel fashion,
this just cannot be a normal process.
So, without any further ado, let me
introduce you to the Dola. Now, I won't
stand here and slander all camels at
this part. So, let me first clarify that
the dola is thankfully only found in
male dramadary camels, so not the
bactranine. But these camels are
weirdos. And during mating season, when
they want to impress the ladies, they
inflate their dola and push it out of
their mouth, which let me be clear, they
basically turn their throat inside out
and blow it up like a giant pink balloon
that hangs out the side of their mouth.
And then at the same time, to make it
that much more appealing, they make
horrible gurgling sounds that sound like
the cross between some Jurassic Park
So, in other words, it is without
question one of the most disturbing
things you'll ever see a mammal do
voluntarily. And yet, female camels love
it. Apparently, the bigger and grosser
the dola, the more attractive the male,
probably. But hey, who am I to judge?
But of course, that's not all. It just
couldn't be, as the males will also
urinate on their own tails and whip them
around to spread that oh so irresistible
scent. And then at the same time, they
also gurgle copious amounts of saliva
causing them to foam at the mouth like
they have rabies. But again, apparently
this is all super attractive. And so
with a mating ritual so uh well unique,
you might not be surprised to hear that
they're also a little bit off in the
head. Specifically, they're jerks. And
not in a cute grumpy cat way, but more
in a I will try to bite your face off
and feel nothing kind of way. And these
guys are notorious for being badteered
and also holding grudges. with there
being at least one story of a camel who
literally bit his owner's head off after
he left the camel tied out in the heat
the whole day. And if getting your head
potentially bit off wasn't bad enough,
just like their cousins, the llama, they
spit. And I don't mean a little pati.
And when a camel spits, it's uh more
like vomiting on you with spit, as it's
not just saliva. It's also partially
digested whatever the heck they ate
mixed with stomach acid. Oh, and uh they
also aim for the face. But with all this
said, despite being grumpy, vengeful,
and prone to spitting stomach acid,
camels have been one of the most
important animals in human history.
We're talking empire building
worldchanging levels of important. I
mean, in some sense, the domestication
of camels essentially rewrote the map of
the ancient world. They became key
animals for transportation, not only for
personal purposes, but also for trade
purposes. And they're a mainstay for
transportation on the Silk Road, which
is, you know, perhaps the most
influential trade route in the entire
history of mankind. But they weren't
just useful for trade. Camels were also
weapons of war. And I don't mean the
typical cavalry charge way. I more mean
the psychological warfare way. You see,
horses, those refined, oh so noble
animals, are absolutely terrified of
camels. The smell, the noise, the shape,
perhaps the dola. Horses want nothing to
do with them. And some ancient armies
figured this out and started putting
camels at the front of their battle
lines. For example, the Battle of
Thimbra in 547 BC was literally won by
Cyrus the Great due to him using camels
to freak out Crows's cavalry. And
besides getting people to places and
acting as the boogeyman for horses, they
also kept people alive. Literally. You
see, camel milk is valuable. Very
valuable. And why? Well, because in the
desert, camel milk is basically like a
superfood that makes regular milk look
like white water. First off, it's got
three times the vitamin C of cow milk.
And in the desert where fresh fruits and
vegetables are about as common as Wi-Fi
signals, this is huge as it can both
prevent and treat scurvy. And it also
doesn't curdle easily, so it stays fresh
for longer in hot conditions. And here's
the real wild part. Camel contains
unique proteins with antimicrobial
properties. And some studies even
suggest it can help with diabetes and
autoimmune disorders. Now, is the
science 100% conclusive? Not yet. But
it's obviously conclusive enough that
companies are pouring millions and
making millions from both selling camel
milk and the adjacent research because
the preliminary results are that
promising. Oh, and uh people with
lactose intolerance can also drink camel
milk without problems as the proteins
are structured differently than cow milk
and they also have less lactose. The
betawin even have a saying water is the
soul but camel milk is life. And they
weren't exaggerating with having many
documented cases of people surviving for
weeks on nothing but camel milk. And uh
to that I say try doing that with cow
milk and see how you feel. So with all
these adaptations and survival skills,
you would think that camels would be
thriving everywhere. And you'd be right.
Too right. In fact, let me tell you
about Australia's dirty little secret.
In the 1840s, British colonists had a
brilliant idea. Their thought process
kind of went like this. Australia is
basically a desert. Camels love deserts.
And so Australia plus camel is obviously
a great mix. And so they imported camels
from Afghanistan to help explore and
develop the outback. And the camels,
unsurprisingly, did great. They helped
with transport, made trade more
lucrative, and just generally helped
with everything you might need in a
desert. But then cars were invented, and
suddenly nobody needed camels anymore.
So what did they do? Well, in typical
human fashion, they just uh let them go
into the wild. And let me just specify,
into the Australian wild, which is a a
continent with no natural predators for
large mammals and uh lots of desert. So,
what could possibly go wrong? And if you
were thinking everything, you'd be
right. Because those released camels did
not die. They did not even struggle.
Honestly, it was probably more like they
looked at the Australian outback and
said, "Finally, a desert that
understands us." Because as soon as they
were set loose, they started breeding
and breeding and breeding. And by 2008,
there were over 1 million feral camels
roaming Australia, with the population
doubling every 8 years. And they weren't
content to just hang around the deep
desert either. Feral camels were
destroying water sources, breaking into
towns, causing traffic accidents, and
generally being a massive ecological
disaster. They destroy water holes,
leaving native animals to die. And
they'd eat native plants to decimation.
And so all of this was obviously a big
problem, and the Australian government
eventually had to authorize massive
coals. And when I say massive coals,
we're talking military-style operations
with helicopters and sharpshooters. And
between 2009 and 2013, they killed
160,000 camels from helicopters. That
is, it was basically as close as you can
get to a camel apocalypse. But remember
what I said about them holding grudges?
Well, there are still hundreds of
thousands of them out there, and they're
likely just waiting, planning their
revenge. Just kidding, probably. But
honestly, the irony is hilarious in the
worst way. An animal from North America,
perfected in Asia and Africa, is now an
invasive species destroying Australia.
It's like biological musical chairs,
except uh everyone loses. But where does
this leave camels today? Well, if you've
been following, it's complicated.
Domestic camels are doing just fine.
There are approximately over 35 million
of them worldwide, with camels still
being essential for life in many parts
of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
But remember those wild bactrun camels I
mentioned earlier, the ones that can
drink salt water? Well, they are in
serious trouble. There are only about
950 left in the wild, making them one of
the most endangered large mammals on
Earth. They're getting squeezed by
mining, hunting, and habitat loss. With
even wolf attacks increasing as their
preferred prey disappears. And here's
the real kicker. These guys might be the
only true wild camels left. Every other
camel on Earth descends from domestic
stock. And so, these saltwater drinking
weirdos in the Gobi Desert might be our
only window into what camels were like
before humans got involved. and we're
letting them disappear because nobody
wants to save a fugly animal that spits.
Which is why I'm dropping a link to the
Wild Camel Protection Foundation, a
conservation group, which by the way was
literally co-founded with Jane Goodall,
who if you didn't know, fundamentally
changed primate conservation on our
planet. So consider donating to this
group if you'd like to help. But on the
bright side, or perhaps not so bright
side for everyone else, climate change
is making more of the world camel
friendly. As temperatures rise and
rainfall patterns shift, marginal lands
that once supported cattle are becoming
too harsh. But for camels, just another
Tuesday. And we're already seeing in
certain parts of Africa that
pastoralists are switching from cattle
to camels as the weather becomes more
severe. Which makes a lot of sense
seeing that camels need less water, eat
plants that cattle won't touch, and can
travel farther to find food. So, what's
the takeaway from all this camel
madness? Well, probably the biggest
thing is that specialization can be a
type of superpower. I mean, camels
aren't good at everything. For one,
they're terrible at being normal
mammals, but they're amazing at being
desert ones. So, the next time someone
mentions camels, don't think of them as
some boring desert animals with water
humps. Think of them as what they truly
are. Doablowing, antibody innovating,
water recycling, revenge plotting, acid
spitting survivors that have turned
living in the most brutal places on
Earth into just another Tuesday. They're
not majestic. They're not beautiful.
They probably smell and definitely have
the personality of a DMV employee on a
Monday. But when the world ends and
we're all fighting over the last drops
of water, the camels will be standing
there chewing their cud, making weird
noises with their body temperatures
drifting lazily between hypothermia and
heat stroke, just waiting to spit on our
graves, probably. So maybe the real
question isn't really how did camels get
so weird, but rather why everything else
stayed so normal. I mean, in a universe
that's mostly empty space and exploding
stars, and on a planet that's had at
least five mass extinctions and has many
ice ages, being a normal mammal seems
like the weird choice. Now, yes, they
turn their blood cells into the wrong
shape, put their fat in a backpack, and
call it a day, and breathe their own
water while peeing syrup, but hey, it's
working. And in the game of life,
considering our climatic trends, they're
probably winning. Oh, and uh last fun
fact, only 14% of you are subscribed.
So, if you enjoyed the video, consider
hitting that sub button. And unlike
camels, I promise not to spit stomach
acid on you or blow my soft pallet in
your direction. Well, as long as you hit
the sub button, that is. Anyways, thanks
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
