If asked to name countries with the most camel , most people would credibly go for somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa . Australia is unlikely to get a credit , but not only does it have more camels than many places where they are a big part of the culture , but it may before long challenge for the largest camel population of all .
That may come as a shock absorber , because visitor to Egypt , for example , will incur themselves beset with offers to travel to ancient sites on a camel ’s back or buy camel - shaped souvenir in many forms . Neither is very likely in Australia , where camels are more of a dirty arcanum . No one has done an exact reckoning of every res publica ’s camels , but theGuinness Book of Recordsnotes Australia has the most non - domesticated camels by far .
Somalia , Chad , and Sudan , where camels are used as livestock , are still place as the place where camelsare most abundant . However , Australia is uprise speedily up the chart , and could be near the top quite soon without drastic action .
Camels in the first place evolve in North America , but get across to Asia when the Bering Land Bridge was extensive around 6 - 7 million years ago . Some compounding of the end of the last ice age and the arrival of humans did the American camels in , although congeneric like llama accommodate to the new arrivals ’ presence .
Meanwhile , camel had curb much of Asia and Africa , but crossing theWallace Lineto reach Australia was beyond them . Unlike some recent arrivals to that continent , they also could n’t get there by stow aside in someone ’s baggage or theballast water of a ship . Instead , when confronted with challenge of build up a telegraph air through the desert and generally getting around Australia ’s vast , dry interior , colonial authorities hire cameleers from Afghanistan and what is now Pakistan to supply conveyance with their Arabian camel .
Some camel probably escaped during this time , but it was the rise of the car that contribute to big numbers of feral camels , as many were turned loose once automobile took their line of work .
In the arid Department of the Interior , the pension off - off camels found heaven for ungulates capable of belong for longsighted geological period without water . In their home range , they had to look out out for predators , or people wishing to squeeze them into service . In Australia , they face no such danger unless they roamed far enough compass north to strain crocodile state .
Long - lived species usually do n’t procreate tight , but faced with so niggling limitation and petty in the way of competition , camel numbers took off , although it was a C before the trouble start to get out attention . Culls have contract camel number byat least 100,000 , but with estimate of those still range the interior range from a few hundred thousand to several million , that ’s a minor pep pill hump on the road to continental dominance .
To an ecosystem adapted to nothing bigger than a human being or a red kangaroo , camel have been a catastrophe . Each camel eats vastly more of the local botany than any native animate being , displacing many mintage , including endangered ones . camel ’ electrical capacity to go for days without water and then replenish themselves rapidly can see waterholes that others rely on intoxicated prohibitionist or afoul . On the positive side , camels do control thespread of weedsand mayreduce wildfires .
Meanwhile , across their home range , camel are now overwhelmingly domesticated . Around 1,000 Wild Bactrian camels come through in China . The Bactrian camel , a dissimilar species , and the Dromedary are overwhelmingly keep for heart and soul , milk , or carrying hoi polloi , although little native population and escapees hold out in distant locations .
