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Land mammals

Bactrian camel

Amazing fact

A Bactrian camel can close its nostrils to keep out sand and dust.

University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
Bactrian camel in its habitat (illustration)

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An illustration based on the real animal.

A little discovery to share.

A Bactrian camel can close its nostrils to keep out sand and dust.

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THE REAL WORLD

The real Bactrian camel

Scientific name
Camelus bactrianus
Japanese name
フタコブラクダ
Group
Land mammals
Class
Mammalia
Order
Artiodactyla
Family
Camelidae
Genus
Camelus
Facts about the real animal.

Some classifications treat wild Bactrian camels as a separate species, Camelus ferus.

01

It is kept by people in Central Asia and elsewhere, and wild ones live in places such as the Gobi Desert.

02

Its humps hold fat, not water; the fat is an energy store and also blocks heat from the sun.

03

In winter it pushes aside and digs through snow to find food underneath.

How the Bactrian camel lives

Herds spend their days moving from place to place and grazing. They eat thorny plants and salty plants too. When the snow melts in spring, they return to the desert.

University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web

Basic data

Size
2.25–3.45 m
Weight
300–690 kg
Active
By day (diurnal)
Diet
Grasses
University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web

Where the Bactrian camel has been recorded

World map with dots where the Bactrian camel has been recorded
Each dot marks a place with observations or specimens shared on GBIF. Some records are of animals that strayed or were brought by people, so the dots are not always where the animal lives.

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Where it livesAsiaDeserts

Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.

Names around the world

简体中文
双峰驼
繁體中文
雙峰駱駝
한국어
쌍봉낙타
Português (Brasil)
Camelo-bactriano
Italiano
Cammello
Bahasa Indonesia
Unta Baktria
Türkçe
Deve

Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.

Sources and how we check

We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.

The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.

The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.

This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.

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