If you can't trust your camels' beauty is natural, then what are we doing here?
The BBC News
reports
12 prized camels were disqualified from a Saudi Arabian beauty pageant when their owners were found to be injecting Botox into the animals.
There's big money to be had in the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival , which has been going on since 2000. The total cash prize available is $57 million.
(King Abdulaziz Camel Festival)
So there's no cheating allowed. When judges, who grade camels on their leathery mouths, shapely humps, and physiques, discovered some of the owners had been using Botox to enhance their camels' lips, noses and jaws, they stepped in.
"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,'" Ali Al Mazrouei, the son of a top Emirati breeder, told news website The National.
They ain't playin'. According to BBC News, chief judge Fawzan al-Madi called the camel "a symbol of Saudi Arabia." "We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime," he said.
The festival also includes camel racing and camel milk tastings.
(h/t Reddit)