The Camel Capillary

Abstract

VARIOUS mechanisms have been proposed to explain the ability of the camel to survive the dehydration stresses of desert life. The use of the fatty hump as a water store has been excluded because calculations of the volume of water released from the metabolic breakdown of this amount of fat do not coincide with the measured losses of body water¹. Consideration has been given to the stomach asthe organ in which the camel could store water for periods of severe dehydration. There is some evidence to indicate that the stomach of the camel may indeed play such a part. However, measurements of the amount of water which the camel stomach can store for such a purpose do not give clear evidence that such stores could in fact be completely adequate to see the camel through the prolonged periods of dehydration which it has been known to endure². Peck has observed that camels develop a ‘physiological’ subcutaneous œdema immediately after rehydrating themselves, and he noted that this phenomenon may last as long as 24 h. On this basis he suggested that the subcutaneous tissue might act as a water-storage depot³.