More than 40 camels have been disqualified from a Saudi beauty pageant after dozens of the animals were given Botox, face lifts and muscle-boosting hormones.
The beauties were booted in one of the biggest ever crackdowns at the Abdulaziz Camel Festival where breeders compete for some £49 million in prize money.
Judges at the festival, hosted in the desert northeast of the capital Riyadh, said this year they are using ‘specialised and advanced’ technology to detect nip and tuck.
Cheaters use the cosmetic procedures to dupe the judges who hand out prizes based on the shape of the camels’ heads, necks, humps, dress and postures.
This year, authorities discovered dozens of breeders had stretched out the lips and noses of camels, used hormones to boost the beasts’ muscles, injected camels’ heads and lips with Botox to make them bigger, inflated body parts with rubber bands and used fillers to relax their faces.
‘The club is keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels,’ the Saudi Press Agency said on Wednesday, adding organisers would ‘impose strict penalties on manipulators.’
Not only is the treatment unfair on other breeders, but it risks leaving the camels with horrific injuries.
