Camels Not to be Blamed for Warming of Earth, Study

A new study strongly claims that camels are not to be blamed for the warming of Earth as these camelids (camels, llamas, and alpacas), release less methane, a potent greenhouse gas, compared to ruminants like cattle, sheep and goats.

The camelid family of animals is increasingly being blamed for contributing to the warming of the planet. The farting camels are in the limelight for making global warming worse. So much so that government officials in Australia planned to kill wild camels on the grounds that their flatulence was adding to the country's carbon emission rates.

But the latest study by researchers at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich advises officials to reconsider the ridiculous concept of kill-a-camel to lower global methane emission as they say that it is the ruminant animals like cows and sheep that account for major emissions of methane globally.

Ruminant are mammals with more than one stomach and regurgitate food (cud)  by bringing it up and chewing before digesting.

The study declares that over 20 percent of the global methane emissions come solely from the ruminants.  The emission of methane is hazardous as it directly contributes to the greenhouse effect.  Due to this, researchers are working on ways to lower the production of methane from ruminants. 

"To calculate the proportion of methane produced, different estimated values should be used for camels than those used for ruminants", explains Marcus Clauss from the Vetsuisse Faculty of the University of Zurich.

Though not much is known about the production of methane in the form of burps and farts from other animal species, what remains clear is that ruminants release more gas per amount of converted feed when compared to the herbivores.

Similar to the ruminants, even the camels have multi-chambered fore stomachs.  The camels too regurgitate food from the fore stomach for renewed chewing. It is because of this that people were under the wrong conception that camels release similar amount of methane like ruminants.

The researchers created respiration chambers for the camelids and measured the air taken in and out after feeding them a diet of alfalfa. The researchers concluded that the camels release less methane compared to cows and sheep.  On comparing the methane produced with the amount of converted feeds, it is slightly lesser in camels than cows.

"The results show us that camels have a lower metabolism. Hence, they need less feed and release less methane than our domestic ruminants", says the vet Marcus Clauss. "The lower metabolism of camels could explain why they thrive particularly in areas with a shortage of food - desert and barren mountain regions."

The finding was documented in the journal PLOS One.