The Rotating Story – Camel Milk to Power a Car

This is one story that I shouldn’t find fascinating based on today’s voracious appetite for “news” sourced through social media but I do. It is a story that keeps reappearing.

Back in 2011, a “company” in the United Arab Emirates announced that they were going to develop a supercar called the Dhabyan and it was going to be powered by camel milk!

The story goes like this: a group of Arab engineers get together and design a classically modern supercar with a unique 550hp V8 mounted at the back, like a single seater race car. The kicker was that it was called the Dhabyan after a famous racing camel and that it would be powered by camel milk as that was the regions second source of power! The story goes on to say that if Lamborghini could call their cars after famous bulls, then why couldn’t the Emirati do the same.

Released on April 1st 2011(!), the story took on a life of its own being reported on many sites not just on the day, but continuing for weeks – in fact years – afterwards under the heading “environmentally friendly supercars”. Just when you think people have figured out that camel milk cannot be used as suggested, the story pops up again on Facebook or GooglePlus or another media source and the merry go-round starts up again with people getting excited about how good this would be and wondering when it would become mainstream.

Just to try and explain this a little further. Camel milk is certainly a power source: to a calf mostly, although humans do use the milk for a food source and the meat as a protein source. It is an emulsion (like cows milk) and it cannot be ignited through compression or a spark. If that was the case, you would see flaming camels in the middle of the desert or spontaneously exploding camels in the extreme heat! Camels have been used by the military, however for logistics not as a weapon of mass destruction!

It really is amazing how many people read stuff and believe it hook, line and sinker without questioning it. No wonder the world is in such a mess.