Camels

I just finished reading Exiled: Memoirs of a Camel. It's about a camel who was brought to the U.S. as part of the United States Camel Corps, which, yes, was a thing. In the 1850s, the military tried to find ways to use camels in the desert areas of the Southwest and found they were very useful for hauling things but then they got super busy with the Civil War, and kind of forgot about the camels, and then they had railroads, so didn't really need the camels. So some of the camels were sold and some were let loose, and word on the street is, there were random camels roaming around in the southwestern US for decades after. All of which is kind of cool and one of those stories that make people think, "Why don't they tell the cool stories in history class?"

Anyway, this book talked about camel wrestling, so I was curious, and this really is a thing. Camels do it naturally, to win a mate, but  camel owners actually will enter camels into sporting events where they wrestle. And, can I just say, camels might just have the most disgusting mouths ever. When they are wrestling, their mouths foam and it gets pretty gross. Also, bactrian camels are WAY shaggier than dromedaries. I have no idea why, but bactrians are very hairy. Or furry. It looks furry, but I'm not sure, scientifically speaking, what the difference is.  And in terms of weird mouths, you should check out camel racing. Their bottom lips are crazy!

Also intriguing is their back legs. They have a lot of joints, it seems, and their back 'knees' bend in what we might call the wrong direction (which is obviously the right direction for a camel). Which then got me wondering if all four-legged animals are like that, so I checked out horses, and it doesn't look like horses actually bend their hind legs when they are sitting. Maybe they do, and the internet just doesn't have photos. But a camel actually bends his back legs underneath his body and does the same with their front legs, so that their hooves are all pointing at each other. And if that isn't weird enough, have you ever heard a camel? It is not the sound you expect but then somehow, once you hear it, it kind of seems obvious that that is what a camel would sound like.

Camels are just weird critters, but they are also super cool. Seriously. Nature is kind of amazing.

One hot July day, downtown was overtaken with livestock, including this guy, so I got some pictures.