Camel Facts

About the camel

Three camel species survive. Of all camels, 94% are one-humped dromedaries and 6% are two-humped Bactrians. A third species, the wild Bactrian camel, is not the ancestor of the domestic Bactrian, and it is endangered, with around 1,000 left and still declining. People have long kept camels for milk and meat, and they carry passengers and cargo across their desert homes.

In a looser sense, camel can mean any of the seven species in the family Camelidae. That wider group adds the New World camelids, the llama, alpaca, guanaco and vicuña, which sit in a separate tribe, Lamini. Camelids first appeared in North America during the Eocene. Paracamelus, ancestor of modern camels, crossed the Bering land bridge into Asia about 6 million years ago, in the late Miocene.

Did you know?

• The word camel traces back through Latin and Ancient Greek to an Ancient Semitic word, gāmāl.
• Camel hair is used to make fiber and felt.
• Llamas and alpacas are camelids but belong to a different tribe than true camels.