Dromedary Camel

The dromedary’s single hump stores fat, not water, fueling it through days when it may lose more than a quarter of its body weight to sweat. When a waterhole finally appears it can drink over 100 liters in about 10 minutes.

Tolerating temperatures that cook most mammals, walking on pad-like feet that spread over hot sand, and closing slit nostrils against storms, the dromedary has carried people and cargo across the world’s great deserts for thousands of years. It is fully domesticated; truly wild herds survive only as feral animals, most famously in Australia.