Camels in Africa are suffering from the effects of extreme heat, with herders in Ethiopia's Afar region reporting blisters, skin burns, eye conditions, and calf deaths linked to rising temperatures, according to BBC reporting.

Ali Umer, a 40-year-old camel herder from Semera in the Afar region of north-eastern Ethiopia, told the BBC that his camels get blisters on their feet, watery eyes, and that hot sand burns their skin and "eats up their hair when they are sitting." Umer owns around 500 camels and reported losing eight camel calves in one month because of extreme heat. He said the wind, which used to bring cool air, now carries heat, and that he had noticed drastic changes in the temperature in recent years.

The Afar region is one of the hottest and driest places on Earth, where nomads often lead camel caravans carrying salt through the desert. For communities in this landscape, camels are not supplementary livestock; they are primary economic and transport assets. The physiological toll Umer describes, foot blisters, ocular discharge, coat degradation, fits a pattern that scientists, animal welfare workers, and various studies have documented as direct impacts of extreme heat on camels, including stress, fatigue, dehydration, and disease prevalence.

Higher temperatures also act indirectly. Severe loss of water, vegetation, and reduced shaded areas compound the direct thermal stress on camel populations. A 2025 academic study published in Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice found that high temperatures and climate variability have a detrimental impact on camel milk production, general health, and feed intake. An FAO report from 2013 states that heat stress alters the physiology of livestock, reducing production and male and female fertility and increasing mortality rates, findings echoed in a 2010 FAO publication on climate change and livestock characterization. A separate FAO publication on animal health and climate change identifies climate-driven fluctuations in environmental conditions, including droughts, fires, floods, heat stress, and unpredictable weather, as factors that influence the physiological state of animals.

The IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land states that climate change is affecting food security in drylands, particularly those in Africa. The intersection of that finding with the lived experience of herders like Umer is stark: the same animals that have historically thrived in arid environments are now encountering thermal and ecological conditions that exceed their adaptive range.

The stress on camels is not confined to Ethiopia. Mohamed Hassan Gure, a herder in Somalia, lost the majority of his camels to a combination of drought, floods, and locust swarms, as documented by the ICRC. In Kenya, herders have been switching from cattle to camels to adapt to rising temperatures and less predictable rain driven by climate change, according to the World Resources Institute. That switch reflects camels' relative resilience, their ability to endure water scarcity and forage on sparse vegetation. But the evidence from Afar, and from the broader body of veterinary and climate research, raises the question of whether even that resilience has limits.

The Afar herders' accounts align with the physiological mechanisms described in the FAO and academic literature. Heat stress in livestock operates through both direct thermal load and through degradation of the environmental resources, water, shade, forage, that animals rely on to thermoregulate. For camels, which use fat stored in their humps as a metabolic water and energy reserve, sustained heat can deplete those reserves faster than they can be replenished. Reduced feed intake compounds the problem, as does the loss of coat integrity that Umer describes. When sand temperatures burn through the hair and skin of a resting animal, the behavioral mechanisms camels use to manage heat, resting during the hottest hours, seeking shade, become sources of injury rather than relief.

Looking at what this means for pastoralist livelihoods across the Horn of Africa, the economic calculus is shifting. Camels have served as a climate-adaptation strategy, a livestock choice that herders moved toward as cattle became less viable in increasingly arid conditions. If camels themselves are now experiencing thermal stress severe enough to cause mortality in calves and degrade the health of adult animals, the adaptation buffer that pastoralist communities have relied on is narrowing. The 2025 study's findings on reduced milk production are particularly consequential: milk is a staple food source for pastoralist households, and a decline in output affects both nutrition and household income simultaneously.

The broader context here is that the Horn of Africa is experiencing climatic shifts that are outpacing the adaptive capacity of both livestock species and the social systems built around them. Drought, flooding, and locust swarms, the combination that devastated Mohamed Hassan Gure's herd in Somalia, represent compounding shocks rather than isolated events. For herders who have already shifted from cattle to camels, there is no obvious next species to turn to. The camel has long been regarded as the livestock of last resort in the most arid zones of the continent. The fact that it is now showing measurable stress under current conditions suggests that the margin for pastoralist adaptation in these regions is thinner than commonly assumed.