Life Adapts

What to do when your well runs dry, or you can't afford the gasoline costs? Easy, go back to camels.

Farmers in the Indian state of Rajasthan are rediscovering the humble camel.

As the cost of running gas-guzzling tractors soars, even-toed ungulates are making a comeback, raising hopes that a fall in the population of the desert state’s signature animal can be reversed.

“It’s excellent for the camel population if the price of oil continues to go up because demand for camels will also go up,” says Ilse Köhler-Rollefson of the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development. “Two years ago, a camel cost little more than a goat, which is nothing. The price has since trebled.”

The shift comes not a moment too soon for a national camel population that has fallen more than 50 per cent over the past decade, to about 450,000, according to government figures.

The automobile almost got another notch, camel extinction, but was saved by global warming. Now about those camel flatulent and excrement? Easy, it's free fertilizer. And when the spring comes, the feilds need clearing for planting, just do what everybody else does, burn them. CO2, soot, ash, who cares.

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