Searching for “NAIROBI (Reuters) - A rare breed” turned up nothing, so I would have to say that, yes it is a joke, but I don’t see any punch line in your post. Care to clue us in?
Da Rest: C’mon! It has all the earmarks! Salt-water drinking, genetically-mutated camels found in China’s old nuke testing grounds (in use until just 5 years ago), but being forced into extinction by mine-weilding, hungry nomads (who just happen to live in the same nuked area)??? Doesn’t anyone find this at least SLIGHTLY odd??? It wouldn’t be the first time a hoax has slipped past the news services…
Gond
Alrighty then, I guess we need to get some biochemists in here pronto. I mean, isn’t salt a desiccant? How can any form of life that needs water for survival take in so much salt at the same time? I seem to remember that there is some fundamental obstacle with cell metabolism & high levels of salt in the blood.
Well, saltwater fish and mammals are able to survive by an adaptation in their nephrons. This was also on NPR this morning. I thought it odd that the preferrd method for harvesting these animals was landmines. I don’t imagine there would be a lot of meat left…
What do you think whales and such drink? How much salt you can get away with drinking depends on how efficient your kidney is. There are limits, but some mammalian kidneys can be pretty good. I’d have to look up how well camels do, but it’s probably a lot better than humans.
Regarding salt water in Mongolia: Haven’t you ever heard of the Great Salt Lake in Utah? Many large and small bodies of water in inland areas are salty due to excess evaporation, often much saltier than the sea.
And Gond, the article says nothing about the animals being genetically mutated. It seems to be using “new species” on the sense of being newly dicovered, not newly evolved. The animals survived in the nuclear testing range because people were previously prevented from hunting there; they weren’t spawned like some Japanese movie monster.
The article, like much “filler” material in the media, has evidently been so heavily edited that most of the information that the reporter may have originally included has been deleted. However, reading between the lines, I don’t see any reason to think it’s a joke - it’s just that 90% of the explanatory detail that would make it make more sense has been left out.
Colibri,
You’re right; the article doesn’t say that these camels were “genetically mutated” as I said. It does say, however that they are virtually indistiguishable from the known domesticated Bactrian camels, excepting for the fact that the supposed new breed drinks salt water. If you are going to point out salt water mammals that drink salt water (as if none of us has considered that already), then please point out any LAND MAMMALS that do so also; I have never seen a sea-camel, so I don’t think that your comparison is valid. I don’t know that a salt water drinking land mammal is impossible, but I sure have never heard of such a thing, and I believe that that is part of the argument that several people (including myself) are trying to find the answers to.
Gond
Okay. I was wrong. So sue me. It appears that Colibri was correct; this article has merely had all semblence of credibility hacked away from what was originally a well written report. See this link for the full story: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/02/0207_saltwatercamel.html
Here are the major points as the article explained them…
Nomadic tossed-camel salad defined: “The remoteness of the area has helped preserve these camels,” Mr. Hare said. “The fact that people were not allowed in by the Chinese government has also helped them survive. But with the cessation of nuclear tests, illegal hunters and miners…are moving in. We found landmines put by the saltwater springs. So when the camels come to drink…bang.”
The Reuter’s article stated that the Chinese nuke tests stopped in '96, but the NatGeographic article says differently: “The wild camels live in the dunes of the Kum Tagh (sand mountain) region of Xinjiang—used for nuclear weapons tests and off limits to people since 1955—and have adapted to the salty water bubbling up from beneath the sand.” “These camels can withstand enormous physiological stress,” said Kate Rae, a trustee of the foundation. “Scientists are extremely interested to know how their liver, kidneys, and lungs can withstand the salt.”
I guess there really ARE land-whales and such!
My remark about whales was just to indicate that kidneys of at least some mammals can deal with the ingestion of salt water. IIRC, all camels are fairly tolerant of salty water and have the ability to excrete highly concentrated urine. The citation of the ability to drink salt water as a distinguishing characteristic for a “species” is really nothing but a bunch of journalistic nonsense. Evidently they are more tolerant than domestic camels, but I suspect that even regular camels can drink water salty enough to make a human sick.
