Camels may live in some of the hottest places on Earth, but they are some of the coolest
(and comical) creatures that God created. Just one look at their skinny legs, knobby knees,
wide feet, humped back, long neck, stretched face, bushy eyebrows, and big, floppy lips,
and you can’t help but chuckle. Just be careful not to laugh at a camel too long:
you might irritate him. And if you bother him too much he might just bite, kick, or even
“spit” at you. Well it’s not really saliva. Camels actually burp up partly digested food called “cud”
and spray their agitators by flinging the greenish gunk from their floppy lips. You may not have
to worry about this with well-trained camels, but if you agitate a crabby camel, WATCH OUT!
Some camels have two humps and live mostly in Central Asia. The most common camel
however is the one-hump Arabian camel. Have you ever heard that a camel can go
long periods of time without drinking “because he stores large amounts of water in his hump”?
It’s true that a camel can go long periods of time (days or even months) without drinking, BUT
IT DOESN’T STORE WATER IN ITS HUMP. God made a camel with the ability to store FAT in its hump.
A healthy, well-fed camel can have a hump that weighs as much as 80 pounds. When a camel goes on
long journeys (often carrying people or supplies) and food becomes scarce, he relies on stored fat
for energy. The longer a camel goes without eating, the more stored fat he uses. At the same
time, the hump gets smaller and smaller and often begins to hang off to one side. Later, when the
camel is able to get his fill of food again, his hump begins to fill out and goes back to normal.
How is it that a camel can go days or even months without a drink of water?
What have scientists learned about the amazing design of this water-conserving creature?
First, a camel can get a large amount of the water his body needs from the plants that he eats.
This is especially true in the wintertime, when plants hold more moisture than in the
summer months. A camel can even get water from eating cacti without hurting his mouth. Can you
imagine eating a cactus? A camel can consume such a prickly plant because of the very tough
lining in its mouth—so tough that the thorns of a cactus can’t break through the skin.
Second, unlike most animals, a camel loses very little of his water in the form of sweat. The less
water that is available to it, the less it sweats. Third, camels do not lose great amounts of
moisture when they exhale. A camel’s nose has a special mucous that helps to dehydrate (take
water out of) much of the moist air coming up from his lungs, recirculating the water
throughout his body. Rather than losing great amounts of moisture when it exhales, a camel can
conserve as much as 60 percent of its water. A final reason that camels can go several
days without water in the summer time and several months without water in the wintertime is because
they can drink so much of it when it does happen to be available. A thirsty camel can drink more
than 20 gallons of water in only 10 minutes! Remarkably, a camel’s stomach may be empty
only a few minutes after taking in such a large amount of water. How can that be? Because the
camel is designed with billions of small cells that store all of the water so the camel will
have it at a later time when water is scarce (such as when he’s on a journey through the desert).
While most humans and animals will become sick and die when losing only 10 to 15 percent of their
body weight in the form of water, NOT camels. A camel’s journey in the desert may be so long
and dry that he can lose 25 PERCENT of his body weight in water loss, yet still continue on his
journey. Amazingly, the camel can keep going because of its well-designed capability to use
large amounts of water—as much as 40 PERCENT—from its uniquely designed, long, oval blood cells.
Friends, unintelligent, undirected evolution cannot logically explain
the wondrous designs of the camel. The cool, comical, water-conserving
camel is an AMAZING creature that testifies to an AWESOME Creator.