Camel Coloring Pages
Camels might be the best desert travellers on the planet. They can go for days without a drink, walk for hours on soft sand and shrug off a sandstorm that would send you running for cover.
Real camels range from cream and sandy beige to a deep chocolate brown, and a few are nearly white. Cartoon camels can be any color you like though. A purple camel sounds pretty great to me!
A camel's hump isn't full of water like a lot of people think. It's full of fat, which the camel can live on when food is hard to find. If a camel goes a long time without eating, its hump shrinks and can even flop over to one side!
Camels are sometimes called ships of the desert. Their wide padded feet spread out when they step so they don't sink into the sand, a bit like wearing snowshoes.
Riding a camel feels a little like being on a boat. That's because a camel moves both legs on the same side of its body at the same time, so it sways from side to side as it walks.
Baby camels are born without a hump! A calf can stand up just a few hours after it's born and stays close to its mother for a year or more, drinking her milk while its hump slowly grows in.
Camels are built for sandstorms. They can close their nostrils to keep sand out, and they have two rows of long eyelashes plus a thin see-through eyelid that wipes sand away like a windscreen wiper.
Camels and the pyramids go together in lots of pictures, but the pyramids are much older. Camels didn't become common in Egypt until long after the pyramids were built. Today you'll find plenty of them giving visitors rides around Giza.
People have been travelling across deserts on camels for thousands of years. A camel can carry a rider and a load of bags for hours in the heat, which is why camel tours are still a popular way to see the desert.
An oasis is a spot in the desert where water comes up from underground so palm trees and grass can grow. A really thirsty camel can gulp down over 100 litres of water in about ten minutes. That's enough to fill most of a bathtub!
Camels look a bit wobbly but they can really run. A camel can sprint at about 65 km/h (40 mph), and camel racing is a big sport in parts of the Middle East.
Take a close look at a camel's lips. The top lip is split in two and each half can move on its own, which helps the camel pull leaves off thorny desert plants without getting poked.
Two humps means a Bactrian camel and one hump means a dromedary. Here's an easy trick: tip a B on its side and it has two bumps, while a D has just one. Bactrian camels live in the cold deserts of Central Asia and grow a shaggy brown winter coat that falls off in big clumps every spring.
Deserts can be scorching in the day and freezing at night. A camel's thick coat helps with both, keeping the sun off its skin in the afternoon and holding in warmth after dark.
