https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Bactrian_camel Does anyone know of this new kind of bactrian camel? I just found it out now!
it's not a "new" camel, it is just the wild form of the domestic camel. There's a trend to split the domestic from wild, as with water buffalos (bubalis vs arnee) for example.
it is the same camel it has always been. You have wild Bactrian Camels, domestic Bactrian Camels, and domestic (and feral) Arabian Camels/Dromedaries. The domestic Bactrian Camel was given the name Camelus bactrianus by Linnaeus in 1758. In 1858 the explorer-naturalist Przewalski named the wild Bactrian camel Camelus ferus. Then the two animals were combined as wild and domestic forms, both named C. bactrianus. That was the way it remained pretty consistently until DNA testing could be used to show that the two were genetically quite distinct, and so they were split back into two species again. The basic idea (in very simple terms) is that the domestic Bactrian camel was domesticated so long ago that it can no longer be treated as the same species as the wild species (in a similar way to how Llamas and Alpacas are treated as distinct species from their wild ancestors). The Arabian camel is also thought to probably be derived from a domesticated form of the wild Bactrian Camel.
"New kind of bactrian camel" Bactrian camel = Animal that had already been discovered before Nevermind. What matters is that I already knew that, while not specifying.
That's interesting; I had always assumed that the dromedary was the domestic form of a now extinct wild Arabian Camel. Time for some research!
Same! News to me but at least that would mean there isn't one more Extinct species... @FelipeDBKO, this is not a new bactrian camel. In fact, despite being described slightly later, this is the original bactrian camel! Even with them having been lumped the resplit took place a good few years back so this is in no way a "new bactrian camel". And yes, most of us have heard of it.. ~Thylo
I doubt it is a definite. It has long been thought it was just a domestic version of an otherwise extinct north African/Middle Eastern species but foetal Arabian Camels have two humps which has suggested the alternative, that it is derived from the Bactrian Camel. So there have been two competing ideas running about for ages. I don't think there is any fossil evidence for a wild ancestor either, for the Arabian Camel. My understanding is that it is most likely that domestic Arabian and Bactrian camels were derived from the same wild species but I can't actually find anything to back that up properly! It may still be in the "one way or the other" camp where you can follow either idea with equal legitimacy. Or I could be wrong. It happens sometimes.
From "Ungulate Taxonomy:" Analysis of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene showed a 10.3% difference between the two domestic species of camel, much greater than between any two taxa of Lama*. If the two genera separated 11 Ma, as they interpret it, then speciation in Camelus would have begun in the early Pliocene. *G&G treat all South American camelids in the genus Lama.
ah, I had seen the first part of that (i.e. "the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene showed a 10.3% difference between the two domestic species of camel") but not the rest, which made it hard to know what it was actually implying. However a point to make there is that they seem to be using an assumption of 11 million years for a Camelus/New World camel separation and then working backwards. The paper they are referencing in here but I can't find an open copy: Molecular Evolution of the Family Camelidae: A Mitochondrial DNA Study | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences There's a paper here, though, about the genetic differences between domestic and wild Bactrian Camels (this also references the above paper): Monophyletic origin of domestic bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) and its evolutionary relationship with the extant wild camel (Camelus bactrianus ferus)
Beat me to the post! There's also this more recent paper on the topic: Wu, H., Guang, X., Al-Fageeh, M. B., Cao, J., Pan, S., Zhou, H., ... & Alshanqeeti, A. S. (2014). Camelid genomes reveal evolution and adaptation to desert environments. Nature communications, 5. Basically, the hypothesis that Dromedaries descend from Bactrians has been refuted. Dromedary fetuses were also recently found not to develop a second hump: Kinne, J., Wani, N. A., Wernery, U., Peters, J., & Knospe, C. (2010). Is There a Two‐Humped Stage in the Embryonic Development of the Dromedary?. Anatomia, histologia, embryologia, 39(5), 479-480.
have you read this? I can only find the abstract but it says that the "two-humped foetus" idea derives from an anatomical study from 1879! It would be interesting to know what they actually have in the paper. This is another interesting paper: The history of Old World camelids in the light of molecular genetics
I spent ages looking for that! I knew I'd read a recent review and couldn't find it for the life of me. Anyway, no I don't have access either. It's also mentioned in Burger's review, though: "an earlier observation of the dromedary embryo undergoing a two-humped developmental stage (Lombardini 1879) has been disproven by demonstrating the prenatal development of a single hump in Arabian camel fetuses (Kinne et al. 2010)."
the paper can be read here: Is There a Two-Humped Stage in the Embryonic Development of the Dromedary? | J. Kinne - Academia.edu There's not much to it (it is just a Short Communication), with no figures or anything like that, but it says they examined 72 dromedary foetuses and there was no sign of two-humpedness.
A *white* hole? (Sorry, couldn't resist an obscure joke! If this makes just one other person laugh I'll be happy. )
too obscure for me I'm afraid... (I shall probably be shamed when it is revealed though) EDIT: Red Dwarf?
