Photo Credit: Yaakov Naumi / Flash 90

How do you call a bunch of camels walking in the desert together?

Their not a train of camels, because they’re on their own, at least in the picture.

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They’re not a herd of camels – don’t look like there’s enough of them for a herd.

Maybe a flock of camels.

“Camel” is derived from Latin and Greek (camelus and kamēlos respectively), which in turn took it from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl, or from a Semitic verb root meaning to carry (related to the Arabic jamala).

In other words, a schlepper.

A camel lives to age 40 to 50. An adult camel is 6 ft at the shoulder and 7 ft at the hump.

Camels can run at up to 40 mph in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 25 mph.

Like a scooter.

Camels do not store water in their humps. The humps are reservoirs of fatty tissue. Concentrating body fat in the humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have had if it were distributed over the entire body, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this fat tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed.

The camel’s red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This enables the flow of red blood cells during dehydration, and also lets them drink huge amounts of water without rupturing: a 1,300 pound camel can drink 53 gallons of water in three minutes.

Wow.


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Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.