UKC

I've been visiting a friend this afternoon and the subject of camel's hump(s) came up. We were wondering a) what's in a camel's hump(s), and b) where does a camel's spine go?

I've tried googling for 'cross-section of camel' but to no avail. I was hoping for a picture of a bisected camel a la Damien Hirst, but no such luck.

In reply to Removed User:

I've got an idea that they are just full of fat

In reply to Removed User:

a) Water.

B) Spine is under the humps.

(I think)

In reply to Removed User: Water or so i used to think until my dreams were dashed by my parents.

In reply to Removed User:

a quick google confirms

"The hump of a camel is mostly a lump of fat. Bands of strong tissue hold pads of fat together, forming the hump above the backbone. The hump of a healthy, well-fed camel may weigh 35 kilograms or more.

Most kinds of animals store fat in their bodies, but only camels keep most of their fat in a hump. If food is hard to find, the fat in the hump provides energy for the animal. If a camel is starving, its hump shrinks. The hump may even slip off the animal's back and hang down on its side. After the camel has had a few weeks' rest and food, its hump becomes firm and plump again."

I'd feel sorry for a camel with a saggy hump!

In reply to Removed User:

The hump(s) are full of fat.

In reply to Removed User:

Last time I looked there was a miniture of St Pauls Cathedrial, a spanner, 3 onions, a drawing pin, some hump fluff, a few grains of sand and a sat-nav.

In reply to ebygomm:

wow! I clearly didn't google very hard at all.

That's interesting. So they're kind of like camel-boobs but without the lactating aspect.

In reply to womblesi:
Pretty much all of the camel is under the humps.

In reply to anonymouse:

that's what I thought, that they were like all other quadruped animals - but I had a moment of thinking too much about it and doubt started to creep in. It'd have to be a bloody strange spine to go over the hump(s), mind.

In reply to Removed User:

More like a spare tyre really!


Chris

In reply to Removed User:

cotton wool

In reply to Ava Adore:

I think you're fibbing.

In reply to Removed User:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Camel_Skeleton_-_Richard_Owen_-_On_the_An...

Don't just google, it is - to a certain extent - a GIGO system

(Garbage In, Garbage Out)

Wikipedia will probably give you more informative links, for stuff like that.

It's taken me longer to write this post than it took to find that image.

In reply to Dominion:

Thank you for that.

Hmm, they do have girthsome necks too. Why?

In reply to Removed User: Doesn't each hump contain a box with locks, full of socks and foxes' cocks with chicken pox?

Or is it time for my medicine?

T.

In reply to Removed User:

I googled 'camel hump' and came up with:

The sexual life of the camel,
Is stranger than anyone thinks.
This weird and mysterious mammal,
Had designs on the hole of the sphinx.
But the hole of the sphinx is covered,
By the shifting sands of the Nile,
Which accounts for the hump on the camel
And the sphinx's inscrutable smile.

In reply to Removed User:
Same as Katy Price.......Gravity defying 'Silicon'.

In reply to Removed User:


Probably from the neck muscles required for projecting a 2kg ball of semi digested vegetation into your face from 25 feet away...

In reply to Dominion:

By the way...

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett is a "definitive" work (well, piece of fiction) on the habits, and mathematical capabilities, of the camel, and gives perfectly reasonable explanations as to why camels are such supercillious, and vindictive gits...

In reply to Removed User: As you now know their humps contain fat but that isnt the important point here. The thing that struck me is how on Earth did the topic come up in the first place? My Clare, but the Winter nights must just fly past when you two get together!

In reply to Dominion:


just dont get within spitting range

In reply to JTM: Hmm.. I know some extra verses to that but they won't get past the profanity filter - even if there's no mention of Derwentw*ter...
B

In reply to Removed User:

Wouldn't it be ace if camel's humps were filled with midgets?

In reply to JTM: The chorus of that song Jon is
And we're all queer together
we usually go round in pairs
we're all queers together
excuse us while we go upstairs

Tall Clare
You do know that an Arabian Camel is actually called a dromedary and is distinguished from the Bacterian Camel, which is called a Camel by the fact that it only has one hump, so if you are asking about the hump singular you are asking about a dromedary.

In reply to Al Evans:

yes - that's why I said hump(s), to imply singular or plural. Which one which is easy to remember - a D (for Dromedary) laid on its side has one hump, where as B for Bactrian has two humps. A handy tip for any life-or-death camel-naming situations.

In reply to Removed User:

oops, that should be camel-*defining*. In terms of naming, everyone knows that all female camels are called Alice.

In reply to Removed User: I like that

In reply to Removed User:

a. Fat

b. See here:
http://tinyurl.com/kwaaj8

J

In reply to Moacs:

Already linked above, but thank you

In reply to Removed User:

Fat of course, as others have said. BUT - did you know that the only country in the world with herds of wild camel is Australia ?

In reply to bergalia: Except there are no native non-marsupial mammals in Australia which means that yours are feral rather than wild unless of course Australia has secretly annexed China and Mongolia, in which case you are right bergalia.

In reply to Removed User:

Completely untrue, dingoes are not marsupials, nor are the seals, some rodents and bats which live in Australia alone, and of course aborigines, who are definitely not marsupial.

In reply to Al Evans: You are right Al. Except for the dingoes which are domestic dogs gone feral. And the Aborigines who come from Africa. Rodents - nope. Bats I'll give you. And I should have said land mammals otherwise you'll be telling me about cetacea too.

In reply to Removed User: Sorry mate you're wrong about the rodents

Rodents
About a quarter of all native Australian mammal species are rodents (which comes as a surprise to many suburban Australians who usually only see the introduced rodent species).

In Australia all native rodents are in the rats-and-mice family (i.e. there are no squirrels, porcupines, beavers etc. native to Australia). The ancestors of the native rats and mice appear to have arrived in Australia around 4 million years ago and have diversified since then into many different species, especially in drier regions (although several species are very common in our rainforests). In fact about a quarter of all our mammal species are rodents

In reply to Removed User: I would have thought 4 million years ago counts as indigenous?

In reply to Removed User:

A loose term 'wild' perhaps. But You're right Ouzel. What I should have said was Australia is home to the only non-domesticated camel (no known owners). They are now a feral pest and we actually export them to Saudi Arabia etc.
They were originally owned by Afghan cameliers - but set loose once more modern transport arrived, but still commemorated by the trans-Continent railway 'The Ghan...'
Sorry to have caused confusion.

In reply to Removed User:
It's where they keep their Pyjamas silly.

In reply to Al Evans: Ah, you are right Mr Evans! I stand corrected, apologies! Well, at least I have learned something new today!

Sorry about my late reply but I have been out in the hubub that is Inverness on a Saturday afternoon.

In reply to bergalia: Imagine exporting camels to Saudi, how cool is that? I take it thats the Oz version of coals to Newcastle?

In reply to Removed User:

Cheese, camambert apparently

In reply to Dominion:


Interesting, I'd always assumed the rather whiffy dead thing we parked the landy on by mistake in Morocco was a donkey but looking at the vertebrae size and skull I think it may once have been a camel. I remember it well because I crawled under to service the diff before coming eyeball to eye-socket with the dead critter

jk

In reply to craig h:

You're thinking of camel toe...

In reply to Removed User:


Since there is quite a bit of pedantry on this thread, might I join in?

"Native" means only that you were born there (from the latin for "birth", e.g. "nativity", "pre-natal" etc).

"Indigenous" is the word meaning that your ancestors did not migrate in from elsewhere.
(Though it has to be said that more or less all life forms have to have resulted from ancestors that migrated in at some point, however distant.)