Camelids: new players in the international animal production context
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Camelids: new players in the international animal production context Mousa Zarrin 1 & José L. Riveros 2 & Amir Ahmadpour 1,3 & André M. de Almeida 4 & Gaukhar Konuspayeva 5 & Einar VargasBello-Pérez 6 & Bernard Faye 7 & Lorenzo E. Hernández-Castellano 8 Received: 30 October 2019 / Accepted: 22 December 2019 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The Camelidae family comprises the Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus), the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius), and four species of South American camelids: llama (Lama glama), alpaca (Lama pacos) guanaco (Lama guanicoe), and vicuña (Vicugna vicugna). The main characteristic of these species is their ability to cope with either hard climatic conditions like those found in arid regions (Bactrian and dromedary camels) or high-altitude landscapes like those found in South America (South American camelids). Because of such interesting physiological and adaptive traits, the interest for these animals as livestock species has increased considerably over the last years. In general, the main animal products obtained from these animals are meat, milk, and hair fiber, although they are also used for races and work among other activities. In the near future, climate change will likely decrease agricultural areas for animal production worldwide, particularly in the tropics and subtropics where competition with crops for human consumption is a major problem already. In such conditions, extensive animal production could be limited in some extent to semi-arid rangelands, subjected to periodical draughts and erratic patterns of rainfall, severely affecting conventional livestock production, namely cattle and sheep. In the tropics and subtropics, camelids may become an important protein source for humans. This article aims to review some of the recent literature about the meat, milk, and hair fiber production in the six existing camelid species highlighting their benefits and drawbacks, overall contributing to the development of camelid production in the framework of food security. Keywords Dromedary camel . Bactrian camel . South American camelids . Meat . Milk . Hair fiber
Introduction The Camelidae family descends from animals living in North America during the Eocene period (45 million years ago). Camels’ ancestors migrated to South America and across the Bering Strait into Central Asia, which has resulted in Old World camels (Bactrian and dromedary camels) and New
World camels (South American camels; SAC). Thus, camel evolution has been recently addressed using molecular techniques by Manee et al. (2019). According to Payne and Wilson (1999), camels in central Asia evolved into the domestic Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) and wild Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus ferus), being both of them commonly known as two-humped
* Lorenzo E. Hernández-Castellano [email protected]
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Department of Biotechnology, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan 050040
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Department of Animal Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Yasouj University, Yasouj 75918-74831, Iran
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