It has been two months today that the family went to the London Zoo, to visit it with a childhood friend of my wife (the oldest friend she has) and her son. I haven't shared that many pictures of our time there and I thought I would share one now. I don't know what sort of camel it is, whether it is from Africa or Asia or what have you, but I thought it was a very impressive, not sure why. Maybe because I find camels very exotic. Looking at this one, I was no longer in a zoo but in a far away desert. It helped that it was a boiling hot day like we have been having the last few weeks. But maybe I would have had that feeling any other day.
Thursday, 19 July 2018
Exotic camel
It has been two months today that the family went to the London Zoo, to visit it with a childhood friend of my wife (the oldest friend she has) and her son. I haven't shared that many pictures of our time there and I thought I would share one now. I don't know what sort of camel it is, whether it is from Africa or Asia or what have you, but I thought it was a very impressive, not sure why. Maybe because I find camels very exotic. Looking at this one, I was no longer in a zoo but in a far away desert. It helped that it was a boiling hot day like we have been having the last few weeks. But maybe I would have had that feeling any other day.
Bactrian Camels are much less common than dromedary (one-hump). Bactrian camels are native to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Aside from the obvious difference of the number of humps, Bactrian Camels differ in a few other key ways. For example, the Bactrian camel grows a thick coat of hair each winter. That coat of hair falls off every spring. This is to deal with the extreme variation of temperature in the Gobi desert where summer highs often top 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and winter months can see significant amounts of snow. In general, Bactrian camels are much more mild-mannered than their hot-tempered dromedary kin. (The Dromedary camel has a uniform length of hair year round.) Estimates for the number of Bactrian Camels in North America range from about 400-800 head.
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Camels can be quite vicious. I remember that a camel killed a zookeeper at the Winnipeg Zoo once.
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