Camera Captures Viral Video of Camels Literally Swimming Across Sea
When you think of camels and water, the first thing that comes to mind is how the incredible beasts manage to store it.
After all, the camel is pretty much the horse of the Sahara, transporting both nomads and adventurers alike across great expanses of desert where there’s little to no water to be found. Their humps have even been thought throughout history to have been places of storage for water. (This is factually inaccurate, though.)
However, one thing you don’t think about when considering camels and water is swimming. Yet, as a viral video shows, while these dromedaries may not be Michael Phelps material, they’ve certainly got some chops when it comes to swimming.
Take a look at this pack of camels as they cross the sea:
Well, that’s not something you see every day.
The video, uploaded by Nature is Scary, has garnered over 97,000 likes and 34,000 comments.
Of course, this being unusual, some less-than-scrupulous writers from British tabloid The Daily Star decided it’s an omen that the apocalypse is nigh, couching their sensationalism under the fact that “wild claims online suggest” it might be a sign of the great flood or something.
“The scenes are similar to the Biblical narrative of Noah’s Ark, where animals entered a vessel to spare them from a great flood,” they wrote about the camel video, as well as a similar video involving elephants.
“According to the Bible, God said to Noah: ‘Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, Also take seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.’”
“And now religious followers believe history may repeat itself,” The Star concluded.
I missed witnessing Noah’s Ark by just a few years, but I’m fairly certain the embarkation process did not look like this. Also, at this juncture in human history, there are roughly 8,700,000 species of animals on earth, which is a great deal more than one assumes Noah had to deal with.
If you can get me video of the other 8,699,998 species doing this — plus an ark to go along with it — then my attention will be officially piqued. I’m just surprised the people at The Star could read the Bible — or any long book, for that matter. At least the part about Noah is toward the beginning, so that made it easier for them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s another explanation for this video that doesn’t involve Noah’s Ark.
“For two days a week now, the Kharai camels are left to themselves on one of the seven mangrove islands that dot the creek at Mohadi in Kutch district of Gujarat,” India’s The Hindu reported last April. “They swim 10 km, along with their handlers, taking anywhere between two and three hours to reach the islands, locally called Bet, along the Gulf of Kutch. Once on the islands, the camels start feeding on mangroves.”
“The camels swim long distances in the sea to reach the grazing areas — usually more than 3 km at a time even in deep waters. They eat large volumes of saline plant species.”
So, there you have it — the camels take to the sea and swim for several hours because they like to eat the foliage of a certain type of mangrove shrubs. Who knew that camels were such foodies?
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