Egypt-Customs and Facts
THE DROMEDARY
If you are not born in a desert, having learned to ride the dromedary almost before learning to walk, you can feel repelled by this curious animal with big teeth, who stares at you with an unkind look and from whom one will rather tend to be wary, doubting of his good intentions toward us.…
But yet, the dromedary, strange heavy bodied creature perched on matches like long slim legs, is a pleasant and very intelligent animal
Native of North America, his ancestor was not larger than a rabbit! Over the millennia, the species dispersed: one party leading in South America, the other, wandering in a huge territory, was separated from the other by the arrival of the sea that split the Earth in continents.
The species, growing according to heir surrounding, saw their differences increasing: In South America appeared the lamas, the alpacas, the vicuñas and the guanacos.
On the other side of the oceans were the camels and the dromedaries.
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One may be tempted to mix the two species in one single name: The Camel – but the Camel, who lives predominantly in Asia, China and Mongolia, has two bumps and has accommodated himself with his long hair to the extreme climates of these countries.
Our Dromedary who has only one bump lives more South and was forced to adapt to the drought and the heat of these regions.
There are more than 14 million dromedaries, most of whom live in Africa, especially Somalia and the Sudan.
They are still to-day of extreme importance for many populations thanks to their unique qualities of survival in the deserts helping the nomad in his wandering, but also the sedentary of these hot countries.
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A few stories on the dromedary surprise us: they are not legends, but true facts:
-A Dromedary can drink up to 250 liters of water in 3 minutes and can stay up to 40 days without drinking, having filled, not his bump as it is thought usually, but a bladder. The bump is full of fat which will be used by the Dromedary during the days of starvation.
-This extraordinary ability has a particular consequence that, while logical, is rather amusing: in 3 minutes the Dromedary who had just drank has grown of 250 kg!
-To retain as much liquid as possible the longest possible period, the dromedary can concentrate the absorbed water so elimination will be fragmentary.
This leads me to talk about the benefits of the Dromedary dung: as it is very dry, it is often used by the nomads to make the fire but it has other specific features:
-When it is burned the resulting smoke send away the insects, wasps and mosquitoes in particular.
-In this bare universe that is the desert, the men will use the round dry dung to play in the sand – a kind of simplified GO game to which I never understood the rules.
-To avoid sweating, the Dromedary can raise his body temperature up to 34.6, 40 degrees, allowing saving 5 liters of water per day!
-Apart from all these unusual features, it remains a fact of which the consequences are not really yet elucidated by men of science: unlike the other mammals the Dromedary red cells are oval and round, like those of snakes, birds and fish!
– I left for the end a crucial feature although very little known: the female Dromedary milk is the closest milk possible to the human breast milk and contains the vitamin C in addition to the fact that it is very nourishing.
Some nomads can survive by drinking the milk of Dromedary, as 4 liters per day can give almost all the daily needs for food and liquid of a human being.
It is used also as a drug, and its benefits are not yet fully listed! A baby, suffering of d infant diabetes survived having been fed only with Dromedary milk. He was cured after a few weeks. (True story!) .
It will keep for very long without refrigeration but can be easily preserved by drying.
A dried milk can be reused just mixed with water.
Interesting to read: http://www.sweetadditions.net/health/health-benefits-of-camel-milk
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All these serious facts put besides, what one learn when one is lucky to ride during a few days this extraordinary animal, is that he is sensitive, intelligent, and while stubborn, he will follow easily the orders , as long as it will not interfer too much with one of his imminent needs: a tuft of appetizing bushes or the appealing back of a sexy female…
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