What Is The Real Function Of A Camel's Hump?

The camel is called "the ship of the desert", and there is good reason for it. This is designed for the camel to survive in the severe and dry environment of desert. He stores in this lump its food in shape of fats. It eats so much that a hump of fat, maybe weighing as much as 45 kilograms, rises on its back. So the camel's hump is a storage place for fat, which the camel's body will use up during the journey.

The camel also has little flask-shaped bags-which line (he walls of its stomach. This is where it stores water. With such provisions, a camel is able to travel several days between water holes without drinking. It could hind for an even longer time with no nourishment except what it draws from the fat of its hump.

The hump of a camel is a very important part of its body - important to the extent that it is a camel's source of survival during certain courses of time. Elaborating the significance of a camel's hump, it is a handy and portable storehouse of fat, which is stored there for all those times when the food is scarce. The nourishment is drawn by the camel from its hump where the fat is preserved.

Other than that, a chemical process enables the camel to convert part of the fat into water. This is another added advantage through which the camel can survive for a stretch of about 17 days without any external supply of water. The Arabian camel, as evident from its title, is found in Arab countries of the Mediterranean. It has only one hump in comparison with the Bactrian camel of western Asia, which has two humps and therefore has a bigger storehouse for preserving fat and water, hence having a greater magnitude of stamina than the Arabian camel.