Taxonomy and Genetics
Dromedary is a member of the genus Camelus and the family Camelidae. Macedonian philosopher Aristotle was the first to describe two species of camel, the dromedary and the Bactrian camel. He defined them as one-humped and two-humped respectively in his book History of Animals. The dromedary was given its current binomial name Camelus dromedarius by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, in his 1758 Systema Naturae.
British veterinarian Arnold Leese had classified dromedaries on the basis of their habitat into three groups: hill camels, plains camels and the last being camels surviving in the conditions in between the former two. But today, as both the species interbreed successfully, some authors have considered merging them into one species with two varieties on the basis of hybrid fertility. However, mitochondrial analysis shows the species are differentiated by 10.3%. There are also indications that the onset of speciation in Camelus started in the early Pliocene.
The dromedary camel has 74 chromosomes, the same as other camelids. No karyotypic differences exist among the camels. The autosomes consist of five pairs of small to medium-sized metacentrics and submetacentrics, in which the X chromosome is the largest. There are 31 pairs of acrocentrics.
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