#头条创作挑战赛#
In some of the videos, readers can see how easily these camels eat cacti, as if they were eating gum. But we all know that cacti have many thorns on them, and the slightest touch is prickly, but the camel chews them like a nobody, and these thorns do not work on them at all.
Are camels' mouths made of metal, or do they have some special function that allows them to feast on cactus thorns?
"Ship of the Desert" camel
Camels were once one of the few means of transportation in the deserts of Australia, Africa and Asia, hence the nickname "Ship of the Desert".
In order to survive in the harsh desert, camels themselves have a number of special functions. With the exception of eating raw cacti, the rest of the camel's body structure exists entirely to adapt to the desert.
The most obvious of these are the two humps on the camel's back, which are mainly composed of colloidal fat. Water is hard to come by when camels travel long distances in the desert, and when camels are desperately short of water, the fat inside the hump breaks down and becomes much-needed nutrients and water in the body.
This hump can help the camels not to eat or drink for a few weeks, but if there is no food or water for a long time, their humps will slowly shrink and fall to one side, and the camels will still be in danger of starving and dying of thirst.
Of course, not all camels have two humps. Some camels are dromedaries with only one hump, while others have two humps and are called bactrians.
In general, dromedaries are larger and more suitable for long walks in the desert, so they are mostly used to transport goods. The two-peaked camel is mainly distributed in the cold desert environment and is relatively cold-resistant.
In addition to having humps, camels also have long legs and thick feet that prevent them from sinking in the sand and protect their feet from burns, allowing them to cross the desert with ease.
Camels also have long eyelashes and eyebrows that protect their eyes from hot sunlight and dust, and their noses can be closed at all times, especially during sandstorms, which prevents them from inhaling more dust.
In addition, camels are also divided into domestic camels and wild camels, in terms of size and lifespan, domestic camels are smaller in size and longevity, and the life span is not long, but wild camels will encounter more dangers than domestic camels.
Wild camels have a greater temper and are more vigilant. Moreover, when it comes to finding water, wild camels are also quite adept: they can drink salty water that other animals do not drink, and they can also treat hard, prickly halophytes as a delicacy.
However, it is embarrassing that although wild camels are much more capable than domestic camels, and each has its own unique skills, it is still inevitable that their numbers will decline.
However, as the continent began to pay more attention to wild camels, they appeared more and more often. On March 20 this year, at the management and conservation center of the Annanba Wild Camel National Nature Reserve in Gansu Province, a staff member found that the two-peaked wild camel was carrying a young camel to drink water in Huangyanggou.
It can be seen that the range of wild camels in the mainland is gradually expanding, and the number is also increasing steadily, which also shows that the richness and integrity of the biodiversity of the protected areas on the mainland are also increasing.
Camels eat cacti? How do they do it?
Back at the beginning, how could a camel eat a cactus covered in thorns without iron teeth and copper teeth?
In fact, if you break open the camel's mouth, you will find that the camel's mouth is covered with densely bulging small flesh sacs.
The main component of these meat sacs is keratin, which is similar to our human fingernails, so even if a camel accidentally touches the thorns of a cactus, they will not feel pain.
These small pouches are also able to smooth out the hard spines on the cactus, and when chewing, these pouches are like fingers, and can flexibly give the thorns on the cactus to Shunpei to prevent these spines from piercing the mouth.
Just as some people can eat fish flexibly and smoothly use their tongues to get out the bones, eating a cactus and picking out the spines is a piece of cake for camels.
In addition, Darwin's theory of evolution once again tells us that nature has evolved to the point where it is today, indicating that they are slowly adapting to such an environment, and eating cacti is also a common thing for them.
The camel's stomach, in particular, has evolved over the years and has developed its own way of working.
The stomach of a camel, like the stomach of a cow, has the function of rumination. When they bite down on the cactus, they chew it repeatedly and then swallow it until they reach their own rumen. The stomach of a camel is not an ordinary stomach either, and the walls of their stomach are quite thick enough to prevent the prickly thorns of the cactus from piercing their stomachs.
When the camel swallows the cactus, the camel's stomach has bacteria that can break down plant fibers, and they begin to play their role in fermenting and breaking down the food they swallow. Under the action of these bacteria, the hard spines of the cactus will soften.
Even the sharpest cactus will be soaked in the camel's stomach, and then the camel will regurgitate them out of the rumen, and then chew them carefully to completely crush the cactus thorns before swallowing them into the stomach and intestines responsible for digestion.
In this way, no matter how powerful the cactus is, it can only be helpless to enter the camel's stomach.
But is the cactus really the camel's favorite food? No, the camel is not stupid, and if there is something else that is better, the camel will naturally choose something better than the spiky cactus.
After all, in arid desert areas, cacti are relatively common plants, it belongs to water-rich succulents, and in the absence of other plants, cacti are considered a spare "food", but it cannot be said to be a favorite of camels.
In addition, although cacti contain water, they also contain certain chemicals and fibers, which can cause a certain burden on the camel's digestive system. Therefore, camels don't really love to eat cacti, they are just forced by life.
The strange phenomenon of camels eating
Some camels have such a strange phenomenon when eating: they may spit out a meat ball-like object when eating.
People who don't know the situation may be shocked and think that they have vomited their internal organs.
That's half true, this ball of flesh is an organ of the camel, but it is not inside their body, but a ball of meat inside their mouth.
This phenomenon is not found in all camels, and it only occurs in dromedary males. Generally speaking, there are two types of camel conditions: one is that the camel needs to use it for digestion, and the other may be a sign that there is a tumor.
But the former is the case with most camels, a ball of flesh made up of a mixture of saliva, foam, and other secretions from the inside of their throat and mouth.
This ball of meat comes in handy when a camel eats a food that is difficult to digest like a cactus, as it assists the camel's mouth in processing the food, thus helping the camel digest and avoiding being hurt by the thorns.
In addition, don't look at this big meat ball ugly, it is still a camel's courtship baby.
Just as peacocks in nature courtship with open screens, some birds build nests to attract future mates, mandrills attract the opposite sex by comparing whose nose is red, etc., camels show their strength by spitting out their large balls of meat. In the eyes of camels, whoever has a big meat ball will have strong male genes, and the next generation bred in this way will also be mighty and domineering.
I have to say that this courtship method is really quite strange.
Camels with explosive combat effectiveness
In some people's eyes, camels come across as weak and slow. Don't be fooled by their appearance, people are not what you think.
In terms of size, there are no bigger animals in the desert than them, adult camels generally weigh more than 1,000 pounds, and they are full of muscles, otherwise how can they have the strength to help people transport large goods.
Camels are also rough and thick-skinned, not only with thick hair, but also with tight skin, and a layer of fat under the skin protects them, so that they cannot be attacked by invaders in a short period of time, and fight for themselves the opportunity to fight back.
Despite their large size and slow movements, it is surprising that dromedaries can run faster than wild asses, reaching up to 60 kilometers per hour.
When they reach heat, they will become violent, increasing their speed, which can reach an astonishing speed of 70 kilometers per hour. If the camel hits something else, such as a car, while running, it will be a lose-lose situation, and both parties will be seriously injured.
Also, don't mess with the camels if it's okay, because they can kill you in a matter of minutes when they get angry.
First of all, the camel's upper and lower jaws are so powerful that it is said that it once bit off the head of the wolf king during a battle with the wolves. Not only are its upper and lower jaws very powerful, but its mouth also has four sharp canine teeth, which are enough to bite into a human skull.
The camel's hooves are also very powerful, and they can perform the stunt of four-legged chain kicks, and when they are the most powerful, they can also kick the tempered film to pieces at once.
So, under normal circumstances, no species in the desert dares to mess with them. Carnivorous animals like desert wolves do not dare to provoke them at will, only when they are hungry and unbearable, they will specifically find those lone female camels and baby camels, but the success rate is not high, after all, compared to the huge body of camels, they can only bite the root of the camel's thighs at most, and they are easily kicked to death.
So, don't look at the ordinary appearance of the camel, but there are many details hidden on the body that we have not discovered. However, it is precisely because of this that camels are able to survive in such a harsh environment.