Bactrian camel

• 1. Introduction

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  The Bactrian camel, Camelus bactrianus, can drink up to 200 litres of water in a single day when the season is hot and dry. That is the thirst of an animal built for the steppes of Central Asia. Its two humps set it apart from the single-humped dromedary. About 2 million of these animals exist today, and nearly all of them live under human care. The name comes from Bactria, an ancient region of Central Asia. This animal is also called the Mongolian camel and the two-humped camel. It will chew bones in a lean season and will eat snow rather than search for a spring. It shares a genus with a wild cousin that it did not descend from. So how did two camels end up so close and yet so separate? What lets one animal live through both bitter cold and desert heat? And why did rulers, caravans and armies keep returning to it?

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• 2. Two Species Apart

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  In the 4th century BCE, the Greek philosopher Aristotle described two kinds of camel in his History of Animals. One had a single hump and came from Arabia. The other had two humps and came from Bactria. He was the first European to set the difference down. The Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus gave the two-humped animal its present scientific name, Camelus bactrianus, in his 1758 work Systema Naturae.

  The family tree holds a surprise. The domestic Bactrian camel has a wild relative, Camelus ferus, which is the only truly wild camelid in the Old World. Yet the domestic animal does not descend from it. Their mitochondrial genomes are estimated to have diverged around 1 million years ago. Both living Bactrian species sit at equal distance from an extinct giant, Camelus knoblochi, which died out around 20,000 years ago.

  In northern Punjab, Iran and Afghanistan, the ranges of the Bactrian camel and the dromedary overlap. There the two interbreed freely, and their hybrids are fertile. That led some to suggest merging them into one species with two varieties. A 1994 analysis of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene argued against it, finding 10.3% divergence between their sequences. The deeper story of where camels began lies far from Asia, on another continent.

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• 3. Out of North America

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  Camels began in North America. A fossil record, as understood in the 1980s, places the first camelids there about 30 million years ago. Those early animals were small and suited to warm climates. By the early Pleistocene, around 2 million years ago, some had already taken a form close to today's Bactrian camel.

  Then came a sudden shift. Many individuals crossed to the far side of the Bering Strait and stayed, probably driven by an advancing ice age. The camelids that remained in the Americas now survive only in South America.

  Genetic work on the camel's genome adds another layer. Studies of effective population size show several bottlenecks, in both wild and domestic Bactrians, across the past 350,000 years. A species that now numbers around 2 million has passed through narrow moments before. To see how it survives such pressure, look at the animal itself.

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• 4. Built for Extremes

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  Standing at the shoulder, a Bactrian camel measures 160 to 180 centimetres. Its overall height runs 230 to 250 centimetres, and the humps rise to an average of 213 centimetres. It is the largest mammal in its native range and the largest living camel, though shorter at the shoulder than the dromedary. Males weigh around 600 kilograms and females around 480, with individuals ranging from 300 to 1000.

  The long woolly coat runs from dark brown to sandy beige. A mane and beard of hair up to 25 centimetres long grows on the neck and throat. In spring the shaggy winter coat comes off in huge sections at once, leaving the animal looking sloppily shorn. The humps hold fat, not water, and fat is the reserve the camel lives on when food runs short.

  Sandstorms are frequent across its range, and the face is designed for them. Long eyelashes and nostrils that can seal keep dust out. The upper lip is split. Two broad toes on each foot have undivided soles that spread wide on sand, and the feet are very tough.

  The landscape tests these adaptations. The camels range from rocky mountain massifs to flat steppe, stony plains and sand dunes, mostly in the Gobi Desert. Vegetation is sparse, water is scarce and temperatures swing hard. Groups gather near rivers after rain and at the foot of mountains, where springs run in summer and snow supplies water in winter. Next comes the question of how the body copes with these swings.

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• 5. Living on Little

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  A Bactrian camel can go for months without water. When water appears, it may take in up to 57 litres. The humps tell the story of its condition. Plump and upright in a well-fed animal, they shrink and lean to the side as resources decline.

  The gait is unusual. Faster than a walk, the camel paces, moving both legs on one side forward together, instead of trotting on alternate diagonals as most four-legged animals do. Speeds of up to 65 kilometres per hour have been recorded, though the camel rarely moves that fast. A sustained speed is usually around 40 kilometres per hour. Domestic camels have even been seen swimming.

  Sight is well developed and smell is extremely good. In the wild, lifespan is estimated at up to 50 years, though the average is around 30. No domesticated animal has been recorded living past 35.

  Food is the other half of survival, and here the camel is hard to embarrass.

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• 6. Eating Almost Anything

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  Rope, sandals and tents have all ended up in a hungry Bactrian camel's mouth. In the harshest conditions it will eat nearly any material it finds. Normally it is a herbivore, active by day and sleeping in the open at night. Its tough mouth shrugs off thorns, so it can eat plants that are dry, prickly, salty or bitter. When nothing else is available, it may gnaw carcasses, taking bones, skin and flesh.

  Digestion follows a pattern shared with other ruminant animals. Food is swallowed without full chewing and goes to the stomach. The partly chewed mass, called cud, is later brought back up for more work.

  Snow is a water source too. Bactrian camels belong to a fairly small group of animals that regularly eat snow. Above the snowline, snow and ice may be the only water in winter, and using them greatly enlarges the range the camels can occupy. Because melting snow takes so much heat, the animals can only take small amounts at a time. What the camel does with all that energy shows up in how it raises its young.

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• 7. Calves of the Steppe

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  In the rutting season, male Bactrian camels turn violent. They bite, spit and try to sit on rival males. Mongolian herders manage this by pairing females with older, experienced bulls known for vigor and fertility, isolated with the females to cut aggression toward other camels.

  Biology adds a twist. Bactrian camels are induced ovulators, meaning ovulation follows insemination. The trigger is the seminal plasma, not the sperm. After artificial insemination, ovulation occurs in 87% of females. Of those, 66% ovulate within 36 hours and the rest by 48 hours, the same timing as natural mating. About 1.0 millilitre of semen is the least needed.

  Gestation lasts around 13 months. The female bears one calf, or occasionally two, and can calve every other year. A calf averages 36 kilograms at birth and can stand and run soon after. It nurses for about 1.5 years and stays with its mother for three to five years, often helping to raise later siblings. Sexual maturity arrives at 3-5 years.

  Breeding differs by region. In Iran and parts of Afghanistan, camels share mixed farms with other livestock and provide transport and milk. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan increasingly use semen collection and artificial insemination to improve their stock. In China's Xinjiang region, government-supported and private farms work to conserve domestic genetics and raise reproductive efficiency, and veterinary care and nutrition have increased calving rates in recent decades.

  The 2003 Mongolian docudrama The Story of the Weeping Camel follows a family of nomadic shepherds. They try to win acceptance for a white calf that his mother rejected after a difficult birth.

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• 8. Beasts of the Silk Road

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  Around 2500 BCE, people domesticated the Bactrian camel. The dromedary was probably tamed in Arabia between 4000 BCE and 2000 BCE. As a pack animal, the Bactrian is almost unmatched. It can carry 170 to 250 kilograms, covering 47 kilometres a day, or 4 kilometres per hour over a four-day stretch. Its tolerance for cold, drought and altitude made it a mainstay of transport on the Silk Road.

  People rode it as well as loaded it. In ancient Sindh, the rich first used two-humped camels for riding. The practice later spread to Balochistan and Iran.

  Artists noticed the camel too. Chinese ceramic figurines from the Tang dynasty, which ruled from 618 to 907, often show westerners from the Tarim Basin. Many of these figures appear with camels. Farther west, in Bukhara, the camel took on a more symbolic role.

  On copper coins of the pre-Islamic rulers of Bukhara, a male two-humped camel appears again and again, especially in connection with Varakhsha. According to the commentary to Tarikh-i Bukhara, the image was linked to Verethragna, the Avestan deity of war and victory. It served both as a protective symbol of the city and as a heraldic emblem of its rulers.

  The same commentary describes wall paintings in the eastern hall of the palace at Varakhsha. A ruler sits on a throne whose legs are decorated with winged camels. Winged camels turn up elsewhere in early medieval Central Asian art. One appears on a seventh-century Sogdian jug kept in the Hermitage, and another in a wall painting from the ruler's palace at Panjakent.

  Language may carry a trace of it as well. The medieval place name Narshakh, in the Bukhara area, has been connected with the word nar, meaning male camel. From these oases, the story crosses an ocean to the American Southwest.

  In the mid- to late 19th century, Bactrian camels crossed to the United States several times. The US military brought some, and so did merchants and miners seeking pack animals sturdier and hardier than horses and mules. The camels met that need, yet the United States Camel Corps was never counted a success. It received two shipments totalling fewer than 100 camels. Plans for another 1,000 were interrupted by the US Civil War.

  Most surviving camels, military and private, were simply turned loose. As a result, small feral herds of Bactrian camels roamed the southwest deserts of the United States in the late 19th century.

  One Camel Corps animal found a second career. It was later sold to Ringling Brothers and also appeared in several early Hollywood films. The camel's working life, though, was far from over in the modern era.

  High in Ladakh, the Indian Army uses Bactrian camels on patrol. Trials compared them with a single-humped camel brought from Rajasthan, and the double-humped animal proved better suited to the task. Colonel Manoj Batra, a veterinary officer of the Indian Army, said the double-humped camel "are best suited for these conditions. They can carry loads of 170 kg at more than 17000 ft which is much more than the ponies that are being used as of now. They can survive without water for at least 72 hours."

  The Russian Ground Forces have used the Bactrian camel in the Russo-Ukrainian war, which began in 2022. The camels carry heavy loads such as ammunition and supplies to the frontline. Reports place this use as early as February 2025.

  On the 28th of October 2025, Ukrainian ground forces were seen holding a camel that Russian troops had abandoned during a Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv. An animal first tamed around 2500 BCE was still carrying loads for armies more than four millennia later.

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