Considering safety when treating camels in North America

There is a growing population of Old World camels in North America, including Bactrian and Dromedary species, according to Jessie Ziegler, DVM, MS, DACVIM (LAIM), a farm animal veterinarian and assistant professor for Midwestern University College of Veterinary Medicine in Downers Grove, Illinois; and Joe Smith, DVM, MPS, PhD, DACVIM, DACVCP, an associate professor, large animal, for the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. These camels were the focus of a of a joint lecture by Ziegler and Smith at the 2026 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) Forum in Seattle, Washington. In a dvm360 interview recorded at the 2026 ACVIM Forum, Ziegler discussed a key point of the lecture: safety for clinicians and camel handlers.

The following is a transcript of the video, which is a portion of the interview:

Jessie Ziegler, DVM, MS, DACVIM (LAIM): They're very flexible. They kick in all directions with all limbs, and [it] can be very devastating if you get hit by one of them. I think the other thing that to keep in mind is their mouths open very wide, which is very different from their New World camelid cousins, and they have a lot of pressure in that bite, so they can easily pick up a human by the head and crush a human head.

Safety is huge, having an idea of what kind of facilities you can work them in, if you're working with trainees like students and whatnot, [and] making sure to keep them safe. So a big thing I always do is we do [is] meet with all the team and talk about safety and who's in charge and where, who has what role—just kind of planning to make sure everyone's safe. That's not to say they're all like out to get you. They're just like any other big animal, you just kind of have to know the quirks and kind of know where safe is and where not safe is.