CAMELS HELP FARMERS IN AUSTRALIA
Every morning, Lisa Taylor drives a small truck across the fields of her large sheep farm in Australia. She makes sure that her thousands of sheep are healthy and that they have enough food and water. In one of her fields, there are some animals that you do not expect to see on a sheep farm. In that field, together with the sheep, there are ten camels.(lines 1–8)
The camels help Lisa get rid of the acacia trees in her fields. "People brought this type of tree to Australia from India," she says. "Sheep farmers planted them on their farms to provide shade for their sheep during the hot summers. But these trees have spread quickly, and they take a large amount of water from the ground. This causes a lot of the grass to die, and then there isn't enough of it for the sheep to eat. Farmers have tried to get rid of the trees. They have cut them and burned them, but the trees just grow again."(lines 9–15)
Fortunately, scientists in Australia recently showed that camels can prevent acacia trees from spreading. "The scientists knew, of course, that trees grow from seeds," explains Lisa. "They also knew that camels like to eat the flowers and seeds on the acacia trees. So the scientists put camels in fields where grass and acacia trees were growing, and they watched what happened. The scientists saw that in these fields, the camels ate a lot of acacia flowers and seeds. They also saw that the trees did not spread."(lines 16–21)
This was good news, but the scientists needed more information. For example, they wanted to know what would happen when camels lived in fields with sheep. So they started working with several sheep farmers in Australia, including Lisa. They asked these farmers to put camels in some of their fields. Then they told the farmers to check if their sheep were afraid of the camels. "So far, my sheep have just ignored them," says Lisa. "I haven't seen any problems."(lines 22–26)