Camels evolved from a cold-weather ancestor. We could learn from their remarkable transformation

Coming home from flood or drought, wildfire or research lab there awaits a four-year old named River who loves story time almost as much as he loves animals. Armadillos, giraffes and humpback whales are the current top three, but when picking a name for his tee-ball team, he suggested the Brooklyn Cockatoos.

While I can’t yet bring myself to tell him how many of his favorites are endangered — or how his worried dad has been collecting practical ways to survive and thrive amid so much loss and change — I can at least update his animal fables to fit the times.

“Once upon a time, there was a camel,” I begin, after settling into the night-night chair and flipping to a picture of his old man after a ride around the Great Pyramids of Giza. I point out the splayed toes perfect for walking on sand, and eyelids seemingly custom-made to see through a sandstorm. “It looks like they were born to live in hot places, doesn’t it?”

River nods.

“Wrong!” I blurt with the zeal of discovery. “The camel is actually from Canada! Like your mom!”

I explain how fossils now show that for 40 million years, the so-called “ships of the desert” were ambling over beaver dams, nibbling through boreal forests and dodging bears across North America, until a train of dromedaries wandered west over the Bering land bridge around 17,000 years ago. Somewhere along the genetic line, camels’ ancestors discovered a big hump of fat used to get through cold winters can also help cross big, hot deserts.

Camel fur turns out to be a decent sunscreen that helps with thermal regulation, those snowshoe feet perform well in sand while triple eyelids evolved in countless blizzards also work in Sudanese haboobs.

But these accidental advantages were just the beginning. Camels got better at closing their noses to keep out sand and lock in moisture. They learned to drink saltwater, eat toxic plants and position their bodies in the coolest possible angles to the sun.

Camels changed everything — anatomy, physiology and behavior — to fit into their hot new climate.

But while they had eons to adjust, one generational tweak at a time, record-shattering heat is sending millions of species of plants and animals in search of more comfortable latitudes and elevations, some at speeds fast enough to challenge the definition of “invasive species.”

And to get my most poignant lesson in heat adaptation, I had to trade desert gear for a snowsuit, sail to the bottom of the world and hang out with penguins.

“They were everywhere,” I told River after returning from a reporting trip to the Antarctic Peninsula. He is happiest with nose pressed to the penguin house glass at the Central Park Zoo, so the kid sat rapt as I showed him my pics of a gentoo father diligently building a nest with his beak, one rock at a time.

But then I had to figure out a way to tell him none of these babies would survive.