Do Camel's red Cells Have Nuclei?

Most recent answer: 07/04/2011

Q:
why all mammals have unnucleated RBCs except camel?what is the advantage of nucleated RBCs in camel?
- Manish (age 16)
kathmandu,nepal
A:
That was an intriguing question, about which I knew nothing. I found a few websites that said camel red blood cells had nuclei, but none of these sites looked like reliable sources. This seems to be a regular scientific paper by someone who knows the subject. Discussing the unusual form of camel RBCs, he writes

"The hypothesis that they throw back to the ancestral reptiles and other lower vertebrates seemed superficially obvious, and perhaps led to the error often published that camel erythrocytes are nucleated. In fact, they are anucleate, but are unusual and novel in vertebrates."


Mike W.


(published on 07/04/2011)

Follow-Up #1: link for camel red cells

Q:
http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2007athensbio/papers/566-127.pdf
- Zach (age 28)
Buffalo, NY
A:

Thanks for the url. Some of our old links seem  to have been lost when we cleaned out some junk inserted by a hacker.

Mike W.


(published on 09/06/2015)