Camels were tamed more than three thousand years ago by the Egyptians. He is a riding animal, and gives quite valuable camel milk, and the camel has a lot of riddles. One of them is his hump. Even those first Egyptians wondered, where did the camel get it from? And they came up with beautiful stories that had an instructive meaning, very far from the truth.
What do we know about camels, except that they spit, and in the zoo you shouldn't get close to the cage? Well, of course, everyone knows that camels live in the desert and are capable of carrying heavy loads. They even set up entire tents on them. Camels are called ships of the desert. It seems that they are not walking on the sand, but floating. Such a gait is obtained due to the wide hooves adapted to locomotion on the sand. And a distinctive feature of these unique animals is that they have a hump. Or even two if the camel is two-humped. Only the hump is not a sail at all. But rather, the hold of a ship. It is in the hump of a camel that there is a fat layer with all the nutrients the animal needs to hold out without much stress for two weeks in the desert. Such a hump can weigh about 45 kg. By the end of a long caravan passage, the hump of a camel resembles a wrinkled rag and dangles on its side. And at a time, the "ship" is able to drink up to 50 liters of water in about 10 minutes. By the way, the camel's water supply is not in the hump, but in the layers on the sides of its abdomen. Therefore, such a phenomenon as a hump is still puzzling - all the same fat deposits could be distributed throughout the camel's body. Therefore, nutritional body fat is not the only reason for the hump. The second reason for its existence is back protection. The hump protects the camel's back from overheating, and also improves the heat transfer of the whole body, as it increases the overall surface of the camel's body, so the hump is both a nutritional reserve and protection. Very functional. And if there are two humps, then it becomes a rather convenient replacement for a saddle for a person. Although in legends and fairy tales, it is believed that the hump appeared in camels as a punishment for his laziness. And now he has to work three times more than all other animals, and even carry a hump on him forever.
