2QUESTION 2 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
1,400,000
camels
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
I admit this one is hard to figure... Two-humped camels are a Central Asian animal, so only a handful of countries have them. Call it three. How many head would each have? They're big animals in a niche trade, so maybe half a million.
- Countries that really keep them
- ≈ 3
- Head in each
- ≈ 500,000
- 3 × 500,000
- ≈ 1,500,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- Bactrian camels in China (National Bureau of Statistics, 2023)
- ≈ 580,000
- Mongolia (2025 livestock census, all two-humped)
- ≈ 500,000
- Kazakhstan (283,000 camels, about 85% two-humped)
- ≈ 240,000
- Russia, Central Asia and scattered herds elsewhere
- ≈ 80,000
- 580,000 + 500,000 + 240,000 + 80,000
- ≈ 1,400,000
Reference cited by Fermi: National Bureau of Statistics of China; Mongolia National Statistics Office livestock census; Kazakhstan Ministry of Agriculture
How close was your guess?
Your comparison will appear here.
Compare by ratio: divide the larger number by the smaller one. The closer to 1×, the better.