Meet the Cama: Half Camel, Half Llama, All Weird

Somewhere in a Dubai research facility in 1998, scientists looked at a camel and a llama and thought, "What if we mashed these two together?" The result was Rama, the world's first cama—a hybrid that sounds like a rejected Pokémon but is very much real.

How Do You Even Cross a Camel with a Llama?

Naturally? You don't. Camels weigh about six times more than llamas, which makes natural mating physically impossible (and frankly, logistically nightmarish). Scientists at the Camel Reproduction Centre in Dubai used artificial insemination to make this happen.

The mother was a female llama, and the father was a male dromedary camel. After a 13-month pregnancy—because nothing about this process was going to be quick—Rama was born weighing 12.5 kilograms.

What Does a Cama Look Like?

Picture a llama that hit the gym and grew longer legs. Camas have:

• The short ears of a camel
• The long tail of a llama
• Soft, llama-like fleece (a major goal of the experiment)
• No hump—sorry, camel fans
• Legs longer than a llama's but shorter than a camel's

They're essentially the middle child of the camelid family, inheriting traits from both parents in an oddly balanced way.

Why Would Anyone Do This?

The research team had practical goals in mind. Llamas produce luxuriously soft wool, but they're small. Camels are large and strong but have coarser hair. A cama could theoretically combine the best of both worlds—a bigger animal with high-quality fleece.

There were also hopes that camas might be useful as pack animals, offering the strength of a camel in a more manageable size. Whether any of this panned out is another story, but the science worked.

The Personality Question

Rama reportedly had the calm temperament of a llama rather than the occasionally grumpy disposition of camels. However, later camas showed more behavioral unpredictability. Hybrid animals can be a mixed bag when it comes to temperament.

The research team produced a total of five camas over the years. Some were created using the reverse pairing—male llama, female camel—which required even more scientific intervention due to the size difference.

They're Relatives, After All

This hybridization works because camels and llamas share a common ancestor. Both belong to the camelid family, which split into Old World camels (dromedaries and Bactrian camels) and New World camelids (llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos) about 11 million years ago.

Despite evolving on different continents—camels in Asia and Africa, llamas in South America—their genetic similarity remained close enough for hybridization to be possible.

Camas remain extremely rare and exist almost exclusively in research settings. They're not going to replace camels or llamas anytime soon, but they stand as a testament to how creatively weird science can get when someone asks, "But what if we tried?"