How does a camel live in the desert?

Have you ever played outside on a hot, sunny day and felt your mouth go dry? Then you ran inside for a cool drink of water. Now picture a place where the sand is hot and water is hard to find for days and days.

That place is the desert, and camels spend their whole lives there. Plants are few, and puddles dry up fast in the hot sun. So how does a camel live in the desert, with so little water and so little food?

Camels walk a long way to reach an oasis, which means a green spot in the desert where water comes up from under the ground. Palm trees grow there around a pool. At the oasis, a camel fills up with water, because the next pool is many days away.

And how a camel drinks! Slurp, slurp, slurp. In just a few minutes at the oasis, a thirsty camel can gulp nearly a whole bathtub of water, and that water spreads all through its body.

Next, the camel walks out across the hot sand, and the sun beats down on its back. Thick fur on its back works like a sunshade and keeps the hot sun off its skin. So the camel stays cooler and needs less water.

On a hot day, you sweat to cool down, and that sweat is water leaving your body. A camel sweats much less than you do, because its body can get warm through the day without sweating. At night the cold desert cools it off again, so the camel keeps its water inside.

When the camel gets hungry, it looks for desert plants. Many of them are dry and covered in sharp thorns. A camel's mouth is tough inside, so it can chew those thorny plants without getting hurt.

Far out in the sand, a camel can walk for days and find no plants at all. Yet it keeps walking, strong and steady. Look at the big hump on its back. What do you think is packed inside that hump?

The hump is full of fat, not water! That fat is food the camel saved up from its good meals. When there is nothing to eat, the camel's body uses the fat to keep walking.

As the camel uses up its fat, the hump gets smaller and floppy, and it can even lean to one side. After plenty of good meals near the oasis, the hump fills up and stands tall again.

Our special word was oasis. A camel lives in the desert by drinking lots of water at an oasis, keeping that water inside its body, and living on the fat in its hump when food runs out.

Next time you sip a cool drink on a hot day, you can think of a camel resting by its oasis, full and happy under the stars.