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