Modern camels probably descended from a cold-dwelling ancestor.
It is nice to see camels roam freely. It is not nice to see they still pull ploughs, turn waterwheels and transport tons of heavy goods along desert routes. Domesticated camels have been exploited by humans for thousands of years. They are forced to become slaves of humans. I wish I could let them free. They have the right to roam wherever they want.
with high tech machinery this is possible now.
Actually about one million camels roam free across much of the Australian outback, and cause significant damage to native habitat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feral_camel
Camels are interesting animals, I’ve seen a few about the deserts myself. A most peculiar gait when running. There are still a few camel handlers about, but culling takes out more camels than export or use. Wild camels can be quite dangerous.
Everywhere else on Earth, sadly there are too many people competing for resources for camels to thrive in the wild.
@ Zachary
One would think so. In fact the Greeks had a god for such things: Hephaestus. In spite of being inspired by such notions, they never went this route and instead chose to exploit slaves and animals to get things done. This turned out to be very restrictive of development.
Thousands of years later, we find ourselves in the age of machines, yet we still find people and animals being exploited on grand scale. What is it that keeps the status quo so?
Taslima, am I to understand you are against using animals for labour?
I wonder if the same can not be said about the exploitation of animals?
Not necessarily, since animals have limits to their capabilities (slaves less so, given what they’re used for). Also, animals may have advantages over machines, e.g. wheels are useless on non-straight/flat surfaces. And of course, animal exploitation is not limited to using them as tools, the very first type of exploitation was food (and still is the largest).