Artificial Insemination in Racing Camels hits its stride

Artificial insemination has made a world of difference for camel racing. Dromedary camels, those with one hump, are the type used in racing and the females are preferred for the sport. Assisted reproduction options that don’t interfere with the racing careers of these prized athletes are being utilized with increasingly regularity. Assisted reproductive technologies also help to address basic challenges of camel breeding (among others these include: injury to animals during breeding, disease transmission between mating pairs, false signaling of successful mating, fertility issues such as cysts - common but treatable).

Known also as Arabian camels, these herd animals are highly social with many unique characteristics - beyond their humps of fatty tissue that they can draw on when food is scarce, allowing them to go without food for weeks and without water for up to fifteen days. Camels have several protections against the harsh conditions of their desert habitat and its blowing sand such as,thick eyebrows, double rows of curly eyelashes, nostrils they can open and close at will and variable body temperature (adaptive heterothermy) that allows camels to conserve water and energy.

Magnificent creatures, camels have captured the imaginations of people around the world for centuries and are still working their magic. This is especially true in the desert areas of the Middle East and Africa where camels continue to be highly valued for their milk, meat, hair, and hides. Traditionally, camels have been integral to the survival of communities and cultures, and are prominently featured in poetry and stories. Revered and beloved by many, dromedaries are known as the ‘ships of the desert.’ They have historically been the primary means of transportation, easily able to carry two hundred to three hundred pounds on their backs across the hazardous desert terrain.

Domesticated for thousands of years, camels have been raced in these communities since at least the 7th century. Camel racing, however, is fairly young as a formal sport. Regulating bodies and governing organizations formed in the 1960s and 1970s across the Middle East to establish rules and standards. Popular with both locals and tourists alike, camel racing is big business, important for highlighting local traditions and history as well as contributing significantly to local economies.

Camel racing is an extremely popular sport in places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and even Australia, where camels were introduced in the 19th century. Australian feral camels call much of the Outback home. The population of camels in Australia is estimated to be well over one million camels with speculation that it could be as high as three million. For decades, the government as well as local communities and farmers have struggled to find workable solutions for managing this large population and the consequent significant damage to the ecosystem. They have recently exported camels to the Arab world for the meat, dairy, and racing industries, as well as camel beauty pageants.

In addition to racing, camels continue to be important in various farming and tourist industries. The camel population in the Middle East is estimated to be around 1.6 million camels within the Arabian Peninsula, with about 850,000 found in Saudi Arabia. The UAE has over 150,000 racing camels. Horses are a useful point of comparison, with numbers of about 260,000 horses in the United Kingdom and 3.8 million across all of the US.

Camel trivia

Camels actually originated in North America and migrated across the Bering Strait

About 90 percent of the world’s camels are dromedaries

They have broad feet that won’t sink into the sand of the desert

They walk with a natural pacing gait, moving both legs from the same side of the body at the same time.

One of the noises used to create Chewbacca's voice in the "Star Wars" movies was based on a rumbling growl that Camels make.

Camel Racing

Traditionally, camel races would occur at weddings and other local social events, as a way for their owners to display their wealth and acquire bragging rights. Winners would often win food and animal prizes. Today, the owners of the winning camels are awarded luxury cars along with traditional swords and substantial cash winnings.

Camels won’t run without riders. Human trainers ride the camels during pre-race warm ups but generally, jockeys at camel races in the Middle East are robots. It wasn’t until around 2005 that Governments in the Gulf region were finally sufficiently shamed into enforcing the bans and antislavery laws prohibiting the use of child jockeys, allowing for robots to replace young children for races. Children as young as three were horrifically trafficked, regularly injured and abused, and exploited for years - until very recently and even after the practice was supposedly banned. With stiffer penalties introduced in 2005, and the robot jockeys gaining broader acceptance, the artificial jockeys appear to be the current standard, at least for the larger races in the Gulf States. The UAE entered into agreements with Unicef for repatriation and compensation of former child jockeys. (The UAE committed $9 million in 2006 to return children formerly involved in camel racing to their countries of origin and reintegrate them into their communities in nations such as Bangladesh, Mauritania, Pakistan and Sudan. Of the one thousand plus camel jockeys reunited with their families by 2006, 93 per cent were under the age of ten. The agreement with UNICEF included follow up with the children to ensure their successful reintegration back into their home communities, as well as longer term educational training and rehabilitation so that these children could have brighter futures). Unfortunately, as recently as 2010, Anti-Slavery International was still collecting evidence that trafficked children were being used as camel jockeys.

Early attempts at introducing the robotic jockeys failed because the camels rejected them. Robots had to be made to look sufficiently human to encourage the camels to run and yet could not be so human in appearance that they violated Islamic codes about representational art.

Jockey robot technology has improved to the point that these artificial jockeys cost around $500, weigh under 10 pounds (made from an electric drill to move a whip operated by a remote control) have a spongy head, and a walkie-talkie speaker that owners use to communicate with their camels during the race. The look is completed with tailored silks.

Races vary in the size of the field with camel entrants ranging from 15-100 animals but typically, 25- 30 camels run together in a single race. While females are preferred because of their temperament and faster speed - they are lighter weight, - both males and females are used for racing. Distinguishing features of racing camels include small palms, large chest size, long legs and long tail.

Racing season runs through the winter months, from October to April, with minor races throughout the year. Races are held on Fridays and Saturdays, typically with morning and afternoon sessions. To be ready for a seven am race, a camel will warm up with a short sprint around 6 am. The morning racing session usually runs from 7 to 9 am and the afternoon races begin after 2 pm. As with horse racing, camels line up behind a gate at the start line.

Races are chaotic events with roadways next to the track filled with the SUVs of the camel owners as they drive alongside their racing camels to operate the whip and offer encouragement through their walkie talkies.

Races are categorised by age, sex and distance with all animals identified by microchips in their necks. Length of the course is determined by age, with younger animals (the 3-year-olds) running shorter distance races of two and a half miles. Animals older than 6 will run a 10K course, a race that will take about 15 minutes.

A female camel in her prime, around 5-6 years of age, will run a five-mile course in twelve and a half minutes. (25mph, typical for a racing camel).

For comparison, a classic distance for a horse race (like the Kentucky Derby) is one and one-quarter miles and takes about two minutes for a horse to complete.

An average racing camel will race from the age of 3 years and will usually retire around 11 or 12, but exceptional animals might continue to race for several more years. Camels start their training as young as 2-years-old, running alongside older, experienced camels to learn how to race. Owners of Premier Racing camels might spend around $1,000-1,300 per month for their keep, similar to expenses for a race horse in the same region. Costs for local owners are more typically in the $300 per month range.

Modern racing regulations require camels to be tested for prohibited substances regularly. Racing camels have their blood tested four days before a race and urine is drawn for testing at the end of a race.

Racing camels are pampered athletes, enjoying relaxing jacuzzis as part of their training. They follow specialized (and fairly luxurious) diets that include honey, dates, fresh milk, grass, eggs, barley, and vitamins.

Camel races are often held as part of larger festivals that highlight the culture of the local area. Traditional costumes and rituals are incorporated into the celebrations along with the excitement of race day. Local camel races are held with the aim of choosing the best ones to participate in the major competitions – the Gulf Racing Cup, Dubai's annual Camel Racing Festival, and the Shahanya Camel Races in Qatar.

Camel reproduction

As the camel racing industry expanded in recent decades, so did attention to methods for managing and improving reproduction, particularly for the selection of desired racing characteristics (such selection is also relevant for increasing milk production or preferred features for superior meat, hair, or even camel attractiveness in the competitive field of camel beauty pageants).

In a typical herd arrangement, a dominant male dromedary will mate with numerous females throughout a breeding season. Males are the ones who go into Rut (heat). Mating occurs at ground level. After the female is in a sitting position, the bull will mount her and rest on top of her. Copulation time ranges between 7-35 minutes, with an average time of 11-15 minutes. Once the cow has conceived, she will refuse to lie down for the male and will curl her tail up as he approaches her. However, this has been observed to happen even when a cow isn’t pregnant.

Ovulation in camels is stimulated after mating. Camels have a long gestation period of twelve to fourteen months and nurse their young for an extended period of one to two years. Camel reproduction under natural conditions is fairly low, about 40 -45%. For comparison, horses average 60 to 65 percent, according to Equus magazine.

Assisted reproductive technology in dromedary camels lagged behind programs for other domesticated animals for a variety of reasons. Resources for research had not been invested on a large scale until the expansion of the broader commercial impact of camels, outside of the nomadic cultural interests. World class camel research and breeding centers now exist across the Middle East in places like Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Artificial Insemination (AI) is the least invasive reproductive assistance technology and has been used in cattle since the 1930s. The first reported birth of a camel from AI was much later, in 1961. Even into the 1980’s, camel biology research was rare. Successful AI in dromedary camels was exceedingly rare, complicated by the difficulty in collecting semen and the nature of dromedary camel semen – very gelatinous, making it difficult to handle and transfer.

Successful breeding programs in camels using artificial insemination with frozen sperm and the transfer of previously frozen embryos are newer developments, only happening in the last few years.

Bint Shaheen was the world’s first dromedary camel born from frozen sperm in January of 2018. June of 2018 brought the birth of Victory, a calf at The Camel Reproduction Centre in Dubai, born from a frozen embryo.

Through the end of the 20th century and into the first decade of the 21st, research indicates a remarkably low success rate of embryo transfer to surrogate camel cows - under 25%. This was largely due to the need for fairly precise synchronization of ovulation between donor and surrogates. Frozen embryo transfer allows for embryos to be harvested at the appropriate time for the donor and then surrogates can be implanted when they are at the proper point of ovulation, regardless of the time lag between these events. Scientific advancements in the chemistry involved in reproduction and reproductive triggers have resulted in new techniques to stimulate these processes through hormonal treatments.

Frozen embryo transplantation in camels could not use procedures adopted for other animals. A new protocol needed to be established because sucrose, used in the thawing process of frozen embryos for other species, is toxic to camel embryos. The sucrose needed to be replaced with other sugars. What actually works for camel reproduction assistance took some time to develop.

Under normal conditions, a camel who delivered a calf would typically not deliver another one for 2 ½ to 3 years depending on the seasons: one and a half to two years for nursing her current newborn, then another pregnancy at the end of that with a gestation of about 13 months.

Embryo transfer techniques allow for a significant increase in the number of offspring produced from prized camels. Embryos from a single mother can be transferred to several surrogates.

Adjusting hormonal treatments to stimulate ovulation and facilitate implantation of the fetus in females has been more straightforward in some ways than accommodating reproductive challenges in male dromedary camels. Systems were tested and refined for collecting and preserving semen, (inexperienced males are more amenable to copulating with a sex dummy than older males).

There have been a myriad of problems to overcome for successful artificial insemination in camels using frozen sperm. The volume of semen that bulls produce is small, at 3ml to 8ml. This is a fraction of the quantity produced by some similarly sized animals such as horses. The concentration of spermatozoa (male sex cells) in camel semen is low and the gel-like consistency of camel semen means it does not mix well with substances added to it to ensure preservation during freezing.

Pregnancy rates of 70 to 80 per cent have been achieved using chilled semen (not frozen) in artificial insemination of camels. This is on par to the success rate for other large animals. Artificial insemination from a single batch of semen can be used to impregnate thirty to forty camels.

Years of research and experimentation have resulted in systems for successful assisted reproduction in camels that utilize a variety of tools, including ultrasound for determining the condition of the ovulatory follicle and to confirm the optimum time for artificial insemination.

The births of Bint Shaheen and Victory were exciting developments for assisted camel reproduction. Previous difficulties in finding suitable preservatives for the semen, managing the variation in volume, viscosity and sperm concentration in camel ejaculate, and addressing problems of handling highly viscous samples by using a prolonged method of dilution, are recent advances that have helped expand the discoveries of unique conditions that exist in camels. Introducing the correct hormones at the right times in the reproductive process to stimulate ovulation, improve chances for successful implantation of an embryo and for the successful maintenance of a pregnancy now happen reliably and consistently.

With freezing technologies, valuable male and female combinations of genetic material can be stored for decades. These recent developments in racing camel reproduction are game changing.

It is exciting to see the science and knowledge of camel reproductive biology catching up to the levels of understanding for other domesticated species.

The popular sport of camel racing is already benefitting from these developments. Several camels born at the newer breeding centers are well into their racing careers.

Expanded interest in the sport of camel racing will improve cross-cultural appreciation and facilitate greater understanding of the cultures centered around these marvelous creatures.

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