Category: miscellaneous

So many things which are oft-said about camels – and widely-believed – are simply untrue.

“Australia has the world’s largest camel population” is a ludicrous assertion; many other countries have many more camels.

However, another oft-made claim – that more camels now live in Australia than in Egypt – probably is true.

Australia almost certainly has the largest population of feral camels…all of the same species as the individual pictured above, in Rajasthan – Camelus dromedarius, the dromedary.

It is sometimes (wrongly) called “the Arabian camel”.

Currently, more than 90% of “our” planet’s camels are dromedaries.

Per hectare, sheep are more populous in Rajasthan’s portion of the Thar Desert than is true of sheep, per hectare, across Australia.

Much the greater portion of the Thar Desert’s circa 264,000 square kilometres is in western India, mostly in Rajasthan. (circa 60% of the Thar Desert is within Rajasthan)

Sheep numbers are highly variable, and hugely difficult to count, accurately.

That said, circa 8 million of Rajasthan’s sheep live in the Thar Desert, as do circa 30 million humans.

On a “per unit area” basis, no other desert on earth goes remotely close to matching those figures.

As this post’s images illustrate, the ways in which Rajasthan’s humans “manage” their livestock (and land) are utterly unlike what Australian humans regard as “normal”.

Some domesticated sheep (and their owners) survive – even thrive – in astonishingly “difficult” environments .

The pictured individual is a member of a well-tended flock in a desert that is home to enormously more humans than most of the world’s humans would regard as remotely “possible”