NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND—A team of scientists analyzed DNA from more than 1,000 dromedary camels living in West Africa, Pakistan, Oman, and Syria, and found that they were genetically very similar, despite the distances between them. Camels are thought to have been domesticated some 3,000 years ago. “People would travel hundreds of miles with their camels carrying all their precious goods. And when they reached the Mediterranean, the animals would be exhausted. So they would leave those animals to recover and take new animals for their return journey,” Olivier Hanotte of Nottingham University said in a BBC News report. The scientists say that this mixing up of camel populations has helped one-humped camels to maintain genetic diversity. For more on the relationship between people and animals, go to "The Story of the Horse."
