Camel wool and yarn and products made of camel wool are not very common in everyday life but nevertheless our overview of wool yarn types would be incomplete without it. Camel hair is an animal fiber collected from the camel. The most satisfactory camel fiber is gathered from the two-humped Bactrian camels. There are two types of camel wool – the outer protective one called guard hair, which is coarse and inflexible, and the fine, shorter fiber of the insulating undercoat.

Unlike most other wool types, camel wool is collected not by shearing or plucking but gathered as the animal sheds its coat. Both the outer coat and the undercoat are gathered at the same time, and later with the help of combing (frequently by machine), the coarse outer hairs are separated from the finer ones.