Every month-long festival in the desert northeast of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the biggest-ever crackdown on camel beauty pageants were held featuring the most beautiful camels to compete for some $66 million in prize money.

However, authorities discovered dozens of breeders had their camels artificially enhanced through Botox, and were therefore disqualified from the annual pageant.

On Wednesday, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported over 40 camels to have received Botox injections and other artificial touch-ups to make them more attractive, which was strictly prohibited.

Judges at festival are escalating their clamp down on artificially enhanced camels, the official news agency reported, using "specialized and advanced" technology to detect tampering. The camels' lips and noses were stretched out and had hormones to boost the muscles.

"The club is keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels," the SPA report said, adding organizers would "impose strict penalties on manipulators."

A multimillion-dollar industry

 

As a multimillion-dollar industry, the camel beauty contest is at the heart of the massive carnival in Saudi Arabia, featuring camel races, sales and other festivities typically showcasing thousands of dromedaries. It seeks "to preserve the camel's role in the kingdom's Bedouin tradition and heritage.

The oil-rich country also holds similar events across the region such as the camel race in Ingall, northern Niger, in spite its established and modernized mega-projects.

A few years back, 12 camels were disqualified from the country's annual show after receiving injections to improve their pou to be more alluring.

It has been firmly established that using drugs in the lips, or shaved or clipped body parts of the animals is not allowed. Although these features are considered to be a key attribute of camel beauty, along with delicate ears and big nose.

"They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw," Ali al-Mazrouei, the son of an Emirati camel breeder, told the UAE daily last 2018. "It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it's like, 'Oh, look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose.'"

Fawzan al-Madi, chief judge of the show said: "The camel is a symbol of Saudi Arabia. We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime."

Also read: Camel Crossing: China Launches Traffic Signals for the Desert Animals

"In Pursuit of the Perfect Pout"

 

The standard of beauty for the multi-million dollar industry of camel pageantry is not just its height, shape and the placement of its hump, but a full, droopy lip and large features.

"Cheaters are creative," said Ali Obaid, a camel owner and pageant guide from Medinat Zayed. "For example they start to pull the lips of the camel, they pull it by hand like this every day to make it longer. Secondly, they use hormones to make it more muscular and Botox makes the head bigger and bigger. Everyone wants to be a winner."

The month-long festival is the biggest in the Gulf and involves up 30,000 camels.

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