Camelids
The Camelid family includes from left to right, Bactrian Camels, Dromedary Camels, Guanacos, Vicunas, Llamas and Alpacas.
When you put them all side by side, their height and sizes would look something like this:
Lets have a look at each member of the Camelid family a bit more closely:
Camels
There are two types of Camels, the Bactrian Camel and the Dromedary Camel. Lots of people think that Camels store water in their humps and thats why they can go a long time with out water.
This isn't true. Camels store fat in their humps and Camels have very clever ways of using this fat for energy. Camels also have lots of different ways of conserving water so that they don't need to drink as much as other animals. For example, a Camel doesn't sweat until its body temperature goes above 41 degrees celcius or 106 degrees farenheit. This is way higher than most animals who would have sweated out lots of water before their body temperature got that hot!
When the Camel sweats it does so right at the skin underneath its fleece, which makes it much easier for the Camel to cool down really fast. This way they save about 5 litres of water a day! Their fleece or coat reflects the sunlight which also keeps the Camel cooler and helps to prevent sweating. A Camel's long legs keep its main body high above the ground so that if the ground is hot, like it is in the desert, the Camel is far enough away from it to remain cool.
Camels have all sorts of neat things about their bodies that help them conserve water, in their blood, and their organs. For example Camels have very efficient kidneys and intestines which basically means they don't wee very much water. Also their poos have hardly any water in them, they are so dry, that people use Camel poo to make fires!
The Camel's nostrals are really big and the Camels can close them tight to stop sand getting in during sand storms. These nostrals also help the Camel conserve water. The way this works is that when the Camel breathes out most of the moisture in its breath is trapped inside the nostrals and are returned to its body. If you imagine on a cold day breathing on to a window and it being all foggy, thats because of all the water or moisture in your breath. If a Camel breathed on to a window, this wouldn't happen because the Camel would have kept all that water for further use inside its nose! Crikey!
Bactrian Camel
The Bactrian Camel is the Camel with two humps. The best way to remember this is by taking the first letter of its name "B" and turning it on its side, like this:
There aren't very many wild Bactrian Camels left in the world, so they are now critically endangered. What this means is that there are so few of the wild Bactrian left that they may die out and become extinct, and that man has to do what it can to protect them from being hunted and to protect the places that the live in order to keep them around for as long as possible. Once an animal is extinct, this means there are none of them left and we will only have words and pictures to remember them by.
Dromedary Camel
The Dromedary Camel is the Camel with one hump. The best way to remember this is by taking the first letter of its name "D" and turning it on its side, like this:
South American Camelids
Guanaco
Vicuna
The Vicuna is the wild camelid that the Alpaca was domesticated from. The Inca people took Vicunas and over many years selected the Vicunas with the traits that they wanted and bred them to create the Alpaca. Vicunas have one of the finest fleeces in the world and are still considered endangered because people poach them in order to get their fine fleece and sell it, as it is rare and expensive. The Incas protected the Vicuna by law and the government in South America protects them now too. In 1974 there were only about 6,000 Vicuna left, so they were declared endangered and laws made to ban poaching and protect them. There are now about 125,000 Vicunas thanks to these laws. Every year the Vicunas are shorn in a big ceremony called a chakku where hundreds of people join together with a rope surrounding a large area and walk inwards to surround the Vicuna and herd them into the corrals.
Llama
Alpaca
