Twenty CAMELS are disqualified from pageant amid Botox scandal

Twenty camels have been disqualified from a beauty pageant in Oman after they were found to have undergone cosmetic procedures.

Camel beauty pageants are regularly held across the Gulf States and carry a significant cultural prestige.

These events celebrate Bedouin heritage and feature thousands of camels competing for prizes worth millions of pounds.

But in a competition held in Muscat earlier this year, the high standards prompted many breeders to seek an advantage, using banned Botox injections to inflate the camel's lips, muscle relaxants to soften the face and silicone wax injections to expand the hump.

Veterinary experts involved in the competition were the first to notice such cosmetic enhancements, prompting officials to disqualify the 20 camels involved, it is reported.

Camel breeding is a multimillion-pound industry, and similar events take place across the region.

It is not the first time camels have been disqualified for the use of Botox and other cosmetic procedures in these competitions.

Back in 2021, more than 40 camels were disqualified from Saudi Arabia's beauty pageant for receiving cosmetic enhancements such as Botox.

Judges used 'advanced' technology to uncover tampering with camels on a scale not seen before, the state-run Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

The organisers of the pageant, the Camel Club, said that they were 'keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels' and promised to 'impose strict penalties on manipulators'.

They described how Botox was injected into camels' lips, noses, jaws and other parts of their heads to relax muscles; collagen fillers were used to make their lips and noses bigger; and hormones were given to boost muscle growth.