Dubai Becomes the Birthplace of the World’s First Artificially Conceived Camel
Dubai never fails to stand out and keep on surprising us, and just recently the city added one more thing to the world’s list of firsts. The city has proudly become the birthplace of another pioneering breakthrough; the world’s first artificially conceived camel, Bent Shaheen.
Camels play a great role in the Middle Eastern culture, especially to the UAE’s. One of the most popular activities in the country is camel racing. Due to their belief that camels born to champion parents have higher chances in winning and that only the best and purest bloodlines get to compete, this project was started.
His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashed Al Maktoum, the Owner of the Dubai (Pvt) Camel Breeding Center, was the first one to think of the idea of breeding camels through artificial insemination. The Project Director, Dr. Jahangir Akbar, first started the research in 2014. The project’s first phase took place in Pakistan at the National Agriculture Research Center in 2015. Afterwards, the project was taken to Dubai for the second phase to take place.
Today, there are seven female camels who got pregnant through the artificial insemination process at the Dubai (Pvt) Camel Breeding Center. It’s expected that within the upcoming two months, three of them are going to give birth. This all started when a sperm sample was taken and stored at -196 degrees Celcius from Shaheen, a champion race camel and obviously the father of Bent Shaheen.
