Saudi authorities disqualify more than 40 contestants from a camel beauty pageant for using Botox

Scandal has once again rocked Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, with dozens of camels disqualified from a beauty pageant over the use of Botox and other cosmetic touch-ups. It comes after a crackdown on breeders to keep artificially enhanced camels out of the competition.

Sorry, what?

The festival invites camel breeders to show off their prized camels in something of a beauty contest — think of it like the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, except with camels instead well-groomed dogs.  Judges have been clamping down on cheaters lately, with experts and vets using “specialised and advanced” technology to detect unauthorised camel tampering. The state-run Saudi Press Agency says more than 40 camels were disqualified from the contest this year.

Are people really injecting camels with Botox?

Yes.

Authorities also say some breeders have stretched out the lips and noses of camels, used collagen lip fillers, artificially beefed up their muscles with hormones and inflated body parts using rubber bands. And it’s happened before — in 2018, authorities disqualified 12 camels after it was revealed they’d been injected with Botox. Back then, United Arab Emirates newspaper The National reported a vet had been caught performing cosmetic surgery on camels, including reducing the size of their ears (some breeds are prized for their “delicate ears”).

Pageant guide Ali Obaid explained that some breeders pulled on camels’ lips to achieve the desirable droopy look. “They pull it by hand like this every day to make it longer,” he told the newspaper.

Why give camels plastic surgery?

The best-looking camel wins and with the festival’s overall prize pool of about $90 million, there’s some significant coin up for grabs. But it’s not just the actual prize money that incentivises winning — camel breeding is a multimillion-dollar industry in the region,  and scoring well in these kinds of contests can have business implications for breeders. After the most beautiful camels are crowned, they can be auctioned off in a pavilion where the top camels can fetch millions.

There’s also the prestige. The festival is named after King Abdulaziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, and it’s held to honour the traditions of Saudi cultural heritage, in which the camel has a special place. It’s fair to say winning this contest is a pretty big deal.

What makes a camel beautiful?

A lot of it’s in the lips, which are supposed to be full but also droopy.

In 2018, animal genetics academics Jaime Gongora and Mahmood Alamri listed the features committees in nearby Oman look for when judging a camel. Here’s some of that criteria to give you an idea of the beauty standards camels must live up to:

• Coat: Shiny and “of a clearly definable colour” — the brighter, the better
• Neck: Long and lean but wide — full but not too skinny
• Body: The area between the neck and the hump should be “long and strong”
• Hump: It should be big, well proportioned and in the standard position close to the back of its body
• Head: The head should be upright and big, but in proportion with the rest of its body
• Face: Judges want “pouty and pendulous” lips and the upper lip should have a cleft. Their eyelashes should be long and dark and the chin should be visible from the front and side

Judges want beauty and grace, with the camels also being judged on the way they walk as they’re paraded around. And there’s different categories for different kinds of camels.