What do camels eat? - Feeding the camels

Camels are animals belonging to the family of artidactyls , because its legs end in two fingers on which it leans to walk.As a ruminant herbivore, the feeding of the camel is based on vegetables.The domestic species of camel, Camelus bactrianus and Camelus dromedarius , when living with the human being, they can have a more varied and nutritious diet but, the wild camel, Camelus ferus , due to the ecosystem in which he lives, must adapt to a more feeding Restricted.

Do you want to know what camels eat? In this article of Animals and Pets Online we will discover how the feeding of the camel in the wild is, how they are adapted to the extreme temperatures of their medium and how they survive.

Where do camels live?

The wild camel is an animal cataloged as a critically endangered species whose populations are in decline, there are about 950 adult specimens.They are being threatened by the increase in commercial and industrial areas, the increase in livestock, mining, hunting, reduction of water zones (oases), tests of nuclear bombs and the introduction of exotic species.

This species inhabits the deserts of the Gobi and Gashun Gobi, northwest China and Mongolia.In addition to the fact that vegetation in these areas is very scarce, ecosystems in these deserts vary from mountainous areas to flat areas of sand, extremely arid.Camels can be in the stony areas of the Gobi, oases and sand dunes.

Discover also in Animals and Pets Online the differences between a camel and a dromedary.

What do camels eat in the desert?

The main food of camels in the desert is an extremely thorny shrubby plant called "the mana of Persia", Alhagi maurorum , a type of legume.Despite the thorns , the camels have no problem eating it thanks to their thick lips, which prevent them from puncturing.

This type of protein-rich food causes a decrease in their needs in the camels, something essential to survive in this type of climate.To be able to extract all the nutrients from the ingested plants, wild camels have a greater diversity of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract than domestic camels.

On the other hand, through Food rumination , that is, chewing the food over and over again, even after passing through the first part of the stomach, helps extract the most nutrients from food.

Of course, there are other plants in the desert that camels can eat, it is moreover, a camel will eat almost anything as appetizing as it is, such as dried herbs or plants with a high accumulation of salts.

Do camels drink little water?

To survive in the desert, camels follow different strategies.One of them is to be able to spend several days without drinking, even more than a month during the less hot periods of the year.But when they drink, they are able to take more than a hundred liters in a few minutes.Through feeding, the camels get fat that they store in the humps.This fat can be metabolized so that they get water to maintain their vital functions.

Another one of The peculiarities of the wild camel, which differentiates it from the domestic one, is its ability to hydrate by drinking salt water when fresh water is absent.

If you want to know more about the animals that live in these types of ecosystems, visit our article about the animals that live in the desert and their characteristics.

If you want to read more articles similar to ÂQ What do camels eat?-Fooding of camels , we recommend that you enter our Balanced Diets section.

Bibliography

Hare, J.2008.Camelus ferus.The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2008: e.T63543A12689285.Available in: https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/63543/12689285#habitat-ecology
Iqbal, A.,&Khan, BB (2001).Feeding behavior of camel......Review.Pakistan Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 38, 58-63.
Schmidt-Nielsen, B., Schmidt-Nielsen, K., Houpt, TR,&Jarnum, SA (1957).Urea excretion in the camel.American Journal of Physiology-Legacy Content, 188 (3), 477-484.
Williams, VJ (1963).Rumen function in the camel.Nature, 197 (4873), 1221-1221.
Yuan, L., Qi, A., Cheng, Y., Sagen, G., Qu, Y.,&Amp; Liu, B.(2017).Fecal microbiota of three bactrian camels (Camelus ferus and Camelus bactrianus) in China by high throughput sequencing of the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene.Journal of Arid Land, 9 (1), 153-159.

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