Living in the Canary Islands: Camels and Cauliflowers

I remember once being told by a zookeeper that there is nothing tastier for a camel to eat than a nice fresh cauliflower. I doubt that many cauliflowers grow in the desert, and remember thinking at the time that it was a tall story intended to satisfy the curiosity of child’s endless questioning. I suspect camels will eat anything that they can get their teeth into.

These majestic yet strange creatures look almost out of place in today’s world, yet still continue their role as a beast of burden in many countries, because of their ability to travel great distances across hot, dry deserts with little food or water. They are perfectly designed to walk easily on soft sand where vehicles could not travel, and to carry people and heavy loads to places that have no roads.

I was looking at some old photographs of life in the Canary Islands a few days ago. I felt a certain déjà vu as I was looking at the old sepia coloured prints, because they reminded me of some old family photographs that I had seen in my mother’s photograph album many years ago. These were of my grandfather and great-grandfather ploughing a field in rural Lincolnshire, with the help of some magnificent looking horses. The photographs of men and animals working the land in the Canary Islands looked remarkably similar, except instead of horses they were using camels. Until relatively recent times, it was camels and not horses that were used as the beast of burden on these islands.

The first camels were brought to the Canary Islands from Africa in the late fourteenth century, and these creatures were essential for the European colonisation of the islands. Being so close to Africa, the camels adapted perfectly to the hot and dry conditions in the Canary Islands, and particularly in the south of Gran Canaria and Tenerife, as well as Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. As well as having an important role to play in agriculture, they were perfect for carrying people and goods.

The Canarian Camel, or Camello Canario, is a dromedary, which as I recall from my early school days, has one hump and can be remembered because of the shape of letter ‘D’ in dromedary. Its cousin, the Bactrian camel has two humps, as in the shape of the letter ‘B’. There are around 1200 camels still on the islands and the indigenous population of the dromedary are the only breed to be recognised as a breed in its own right in Europe and has been recently included in the official Spanish records of livestock breeds.

Nowadays, of course, the Canarian camel is mostly used in the tourist industry as a means of transport on excursions in the islands’ national parks and nature reserves, as well as Maspalomas beach. The islands’ camels are also very busy on the night of the Three Kings in January when they are paraded through the streets of many towns on the islands.

As for camels and cauliflowers, I have since found out from a very knowledgeable camel keeper that desert camels are usually fed dates, grass, wheat and oats. In zoos, camels are fed hay and grain, which is about 3.5 kilograms of food everyday. However, if food is very scarce, a camel will eat anything and even its owner's tent!

About the Author: Barrie Mahoney was a teacher, head teacher and school inspector in the UK, as well as a reporter in Spain, before moving to the Canary Islands as a newspaper editor. He is still enjoying life in the sun as a writer and author.

If you enjoyed this article, take a look at Barrie’s websites: www.barriemahoney.com and www.thecanaryislander.com or read his latest book, ‘Letters from the Atlantic’ (ISBN: 978 184 386 6459).

© Barrie Mahoney