Raffia the 10-year-old camel has become the very first animal to help with Google’s mapping missions, using one of the company’s Trekker cameras to capture the landscape of the Liwa Desert in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Raffia and her guide took to the sand as early as 6am in the morning to ensure the best lighting conditions. The resulting film and still photographs show the desert’s rolling sand dunes, an oasis, fellow camels, scuttling sand and some gangly camera-and-camel shadows.



Joyce Baz, Google’s spokesperson in the Middle East and North Africa, was keen to emphasise that Raffia’s role was not just for novelty value.



“With every environment and every location, we try to customise the capture and how we do it for that part of the environment.

“In the case of Liwa we fashioned it in a way so that it [the Trekker camera] goes on a camel so that it can capture imagery in the best, most authentic and least damaging way”, she told The National newspaper.

Raffia and her guide walk through the Liwa desert. Photograph: Google

Google Street View has been a feature of Google Maps since 2007. While most images are captured with the Trekker by car, the camera has also been attached to people (to document the Grand Canyon and Venice), tricycles and sent underwater.



The Liwa desert meanwhile, is one of the oldest sites in the UAE and is the historical home of the Nahyan family, the original leaders of the Abu Dhabi emirate. The Liwa Oasis is the largest oasis in the Arabian Peninsula and the location for many Bedouin settlements.



Camel shadows in the Liwa desert. Photograph: Google

Two other locations in UAE are available on Google Street View: the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.



Baz said that Street Views have been captured from locations in Egypt, Israel and Turkey – as well as the Grand Canyon in the US and the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean – but that Google hoped to create more.



“We want obviously all countries, because there is so much history and culture and heritage,” she said.

“I think it’s just a matter of time before we move to the other countries in the Middle East.”

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