Piebald Camels

Abstract

Animal breeds are the diverse outcome of the thousands-year-long process of livestock domestication. Many of these breeds are piebald, resulting from the artificial selection by pastoralists of animals bearing a genetic condition known as leucism, and selected for their productive, behavioural, or aesthetical traits. Piebald dromedary camels have not been studied or discussed before, and their same existence is often overlooked. Based on fieldwork in Western Sahara, direct observations across Northern and East Africa and the Middle East, and a literature review, we address the morphological and behavioural traits, geographical distribution, taxonomy, and material and cultural importance of piebald (painted) camels. They are a hundreds-year-old camel breed used for caravans, as mounts, and for aesthetical and cultural reasons across Sudan, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Western Sahara, and Morocco. While they are increasingly bred out of a pastoral context for tourism and entertainment in the Canary Islands, mainland Europe, and the USA, in part of their original African range, piebald camels are under threat due to wars, droughts, and demise of pastoral livelihoods. More research is needed about these 'beautiful and dignified' animals.

On-Target CRISPR/Cas9 Activity Can Cause Undesigned Large Deletion in Mouse Zygotes

“…As the first exon encodes only the 5 -UTR sequence and 22 out of the 979 amino acids (MRGARGAWDLLCVLLVLLRGQT) of the signal peptide, the generated deletion can be referred to as the Kit gene knockout. Several research groups have demonstrated that the white or white-spotting phenotype represents genetic mutations in the locus near and including the Kit gene (transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptor) in various organisms, such as alpacas [58], camels [59,60], cats [61], cows [62,63], dogs [64], donkeys [65], goats [66], horses [67], mice [68][69][70], pigs [71], rabbits [72], rats [73], yaks [74], humans [75,76], and even zebrafish [77]. The molecular mechanism behind this phenotype is linked to melanocyte migration and survival maintained by tyrosine-protein kinase KIT receptor.…”

Cdrom Archive: A Gateway to Study Camel Phenotypes

“…For example, sequencing the KIT (Tyrosine kinase receptor) gene revealed the variants associated with the white-spotting phenotype of piebald (painted) camels (Holl et al, 2017; Volpato et al, 2017). The candidacy of this gene was established based on findings in other animals.…”

The Youngest, the Heaviest and/or the Darkest? Selection Potentialities and Determinants of Leadership in Canarian Dromedary Camels

“…The extension and distribution of white spots conditions the degree of deafness and visual deficit. Both impairments have been reported to be associated to certain predominant behavioral patterns [41]. This has been specifically dealt with in other species such as cows.…”

“…Variables in the first block were chosen because of the implications of overall body condition [39] and body size on the determination of camel intraherd hierarchy [24,40]. The second block was considered because of the implication of phaneroptics with behavioral traits [41]. The third and fourth blocks were included as well, as the variables measured therein have often been reported to be either determinants or confounding in the determination of camel hierarchy status in camels and other species [24,[42][43][44]…”

“…However, these authors did not refer to associated behavioral changes, although it was assumed that they existed, following the conclusions found for other species. Globally, applied research in this field has suggested that the magnitude of the aforementioned pleiotropic effects appears to be greater in dark-colored animals [85] and that light-and particolored animals also frequently suffer from congenital deafness [41] and ocular anomalies [74,86,87] due to gene mutations in KIT [88], which affect training.…”