How Do Camel Store Water and Survive In Desert

Unlike people, camels fit in dry areas like hand in glove. Bactrian camel can withstand long cold winters and short hot summers in the Gobi Desert in central Asia. Dromedary persistently breaks through the endless desert heat of North Africa and Arabia.

Camels were first appeared in the deserts of the southwest of North America.

During evolution that lasted millions of years they have become true masters of survival in dry regions. But water is essential to all living beings on Earth, and camels without it can not survive. Blood contains 91% water. If you can not make up for the loss of water created by sweating and urination, blood will thicken. Instead of flowing through the blood vessels, moving as syrup. This is dangerous because the body is cooled by the rapid flow of blood.

Namely, in the conversion of food into energy, the body creates heat. These reactions occurring deep in the body they heat the blood, and it transfers heat to the surface of the skin and streaming by diffusing it. Skin fast radiated heat into the air and the body cool. But dried blood, thick as honey, can not be fast enough to reach the skin. The heat accumulates and can perform death. Even if do not heat, people without water can survive only a few days.

However, camels can survive as much as seventeen days between watering. Most people think that they are humps refrigerators in which the flask stored water slowly seeps into the bloodstream of a camel, but this is not true. Humps are actually full of fat. The camels use their humps, as well as the whole body, in the unique strategy for life in dry areas. First, the body temperature of camels changes with air temperature. At night it goes down to about 34°C, and then, during the day (when the temperature in the Sahara can reach 58°C) can be raised to 41°C.

Because the distinction between the body and outdoor temperature decreased, the air is heated slower than the body of of camels when it was cooler. Second, when the heat, camel metabolism (burning of food in the body) takes place more slowly and produces less heat. Third, camels can really certain amount of water to return from the kidneys into one of its four stomach, and then into the blood, rather than the loss of all with urination. Finally, hump camel serves as a protective cover. This bunch of fat baked in the summer sun, it absorbs and retains heat, and slows its descent to the internal organs of camels. The heat that is generated in the body is rapidly radiated in the air from the camel’s spindly legs.

Camels can for every 100 kg of body weight to lose 20 liters to 40 liters of water, and that they do not get sick (water is not lost from the blood, but mostly from other tissues). However, camels in no case do not enjoy this kind of lifestyle. Thirsty camels, who survived the days of their own again processed water, can consume hundreds of liters of water for five minutes. Read also How to Survive in the Desert!