I'm almost three months into the Quest now, and have long since established that Sunday is the hardest day to learn things. It's short, it's quiet, and even a plane falling onto a house can't disrupt the serenity. On occasions such as these, I turn back to The Book of Lists, which always has something I didn't know before, even if it is of minimal interest to anyone:
Sudan has more camels than any other nation on Earth, with 3.2 million at the last count in 2003.
Sudan has 1 million more camels than their nearest rival, Mauritania, which is also in sub-Saharan africa. Egypt, incidentally, is 19th (they tell you that on The Book of Lists, even though it's a Top 10, because they know that you'll want to know - they know how to do a good list dammit) despite all the fag packets trying to promote the Pyramids to them, the camels ain't budging. Originally both dromedary (one hump) and bactrian (two humps) camels came from Asia, but are now predominantly found in North Africa and the Indian sub-continent, and are nearly all domesticated. There are around 1000 wild camels in the Gobi desert, and some feral camels in the Australian outback.
Wait a minute. Feral camels? In Australia? This just got slightly more interesting. Apparently they were brought to Oz to be used on farms, but have since been left to roam the outback. Feral animals, by the way, are species which were once been domesticated but have since been allowed to run wild again. Another reason not to go to the outback then - as if snakes, spiders and the guy from Wolf Creek weren't enough, there appear to be camels gone wild roaming the landscape...
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