If you have been watching Sir David Attenborough’s new documentary series ‘Perfect Planet’ on BBC 1 recently, you will probably have noticed a very familiar face on Episode 3 – Weather.
Yes, the Wild Camel was featured, and this is huge news for WCPF as it will make lots of people aware of the Wild Camels and hopefully help us keep them protected. The documentary showed how the Wild Camel has to survive freezing winters of -40 degrees in Mongolia, and the incredible things that they are able to do in order to survive.
Not many people have come across the Wild Camel before, after all it is the 8th rarest mammal in the world, and is extremely difficult to find! This was proven by the BBC’s camera team as shown on the Weather Episode as they showed the trouble they had just finding a Wild Camel let alone filming one.
Dr Adiya Yadamsuren went with the camera crew to help them find Wild Camels to film, which was very difficult to do as there are only 450 camels in an area of 28,000 square miles!
Dr Adiya said that they should try to find snow, as where there was snow, there would be Wild Camels. Why, might you ask…?
Well, you probably already know that the Wild Camels live in the Gobi Desert, and that like in most deserts, it is very difficult to find water, but have you ever thought about how you would find water in the desert when it is so cold that any available water is frozen solid? Well, this is a big problem faced by the Wild Camel, and they have adapted amazingly in order to find water and survive. Given that the Episode was all about the weather, you can probably guess that this has something to do with their secret. The Wild Camels find snow that has been blown to the Gobi Desert from Siberia! (Here’s where the weather part comes in.) As it is so cold and dry, the snow doesn’t melt, and must be eaten by the Wild Camel in order to stay hydrated. But this is only half of the problem. The Wild Camels must find the snow before they can eat it, and the Bull camels will drive their herds forward for days searching for it. What is most amazing about this however, is that Wild Camels can smell water from 30 miles away!
After a long search that took weeks, the camera crew managed to find some Wild Camels to film, and captured some breath-taking footage of the camels, which is truly amazing to watch.
You can watch this Episode of Perfect Planet on BBC iPlayer.
FUN FACT!
A Bull Camel is a male Wild Camel, and there is usually one Bull Camel which is in charge of a herd, as if there was more than one Bull Camel, the two would fight over females.
Female Wild Camels are called Cows.
