Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,
Speaker 1: do the humps on camels hold water? The short answer
Speaker 1: is no. A camel's hump is actually a giant mound
Speaker 1: of fat. In a healthy, well fed camel, the hump
Speaker 1: can weigh as much as eighty pounds. Human beings and
Speaker 1: most animals store their fat mixed in with muscle tissue
Speaker 1: or in a layer right beneath the skin. Camels are
Speaker 1: the only animals with a hump. The hump allows a
Speaker 1: camel to survive an extremely long time, up to two
Speaker 1: weeks without food if it needs to. Because camels typically
Speaker 1: live in the desert, where food can be scarce for
Speaker 1: long stretches, this is important. But the hump has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with water. So how does a camel survive
Speaker 1: without water in the desert. A camel needs about five
Speaker 1: gallons of water a day. In the summer, however, a
Speaker 1: camel can lose up to gallons of water from its
Speaker 1: body tissues without ill effects. In other words, normal body
Speaker 1: tissue is storing the water a camel needs. Camels are
Speaker 1: also good at conserving water. One thing that a camel
Speaker 1: can do to conserve water is to handle large body
Speaker 1: temperature swing. A camel might start the day with its
Speaker 1: body temperature at ninety four degrees fahrenheit and allow its
Speaker 1: temperature to rise as high as a hundred of five
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit only at the upper end of this range.
Speaker 1: Doesn't need to sweat to prevent overheating. When you compare
Speaker 1: this temperature range to the range that a human body
Speaker 1: can handle, where only a two degree rise indicates illness,
Speaker 1: you can see the advantage. Do you have any ideas
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Speaker 1: an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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