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<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nOn a day of strange news stories, this might be the topper. It seems that a dozen camels were disqualified from participating in a beauty pageant at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Saudi Arabia because a doctor was caught giving them botox injections, along with other cosmetic alterations which make them more attractive, relatively speaking. From NPR<\/a>;<\/p>\n Saudi media reported that a veterinarian was caught performing plastic surgery on the camels a few days before the pageant, according to UAE’s The National. In addition to the injections, the clinic was surgically reducing the size of the animals’ ears to make them appear more delicate.<\/p>\n “They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw,” Ali Al Mazrouei, a regular at such festivals and the son of a prominent Emirati breeder, told the newspaper. “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.’ ”<\/p>\n Real money is at stake: About $57 million is awarded to winners of the contests and camel races, The National reports, with more than $31.8 million in prizes for just the pageants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I know my driver ogled camels while we were in Iraq screening for Shi’ites escaping Saddam Hussein’s rampaging army. He would talk endlessly over the intercom about his attraction to their large lips. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the beauty contest judges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"