Botox and the Beast – Nautilus

LIthe neck, blown lips, eyelashes worthy of a cartoon princess. The camels participating in the annual festival of King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia are a striking group. Many candidates, who are mainly women, have suffered cosmetic improvements, including botox injections and surgical procedures such as widening nostrils.

For camel owners, earning a contest can change their life – millions of dollars as a price. But the same goes for dromedaries: certain procedures may affect serious damage to their health.

A Botox scandal which led 40 camels to be disqualified a few years ago did not eliminate the practice. “It is a continuous game of cat and mouse between the application of the rules and the bypass,” explains Mohamed Tharwat, professor of veterinary medicine at Qassim University in Saudi Arabia, by e-mail.

The cosmetic improvement of camels with medically invasive procedures may have started about 15 years ago, explains Tharwat, but it was prohibited by the festival since its creation in 2016.

Short-term pain, infections and distress are some of the immediate concerns for camels.

Last month, Tharwat wrote an article to Borders in veterinary science This draws attention to alarming practice. Fascinated by camels from a young age, he later became a veterinarian, but his current work is increasingly focused on the ethical and social problems linked to the animal, which is so central to Arab culture.

The beauty of the camels is a big business. Taking place for more than a month, from the end of November to early January, the Camel King Abdulaziz festival is the largest event linked to Camel in the world. It attracts thousands of spectators and even more camels, and welcomes falconry, the race and other events outside the competitions, according to Saudipedia, a digital resource maintained by the Saudi government.

Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube brought it as well as other contests of the Arabian peninsula to a wider audience, stimulating the demand for female camels with the characteristics of a beauty queen, according to some researchers, who spoke to owners and breeders of the United Arab Emirates for an article published in the newspaper in the newspaper Heritage.

What judges tend to seek in a competitor to a hump off competition are a lower lip hanging and a long upper lip covering the teeth; a wide and elongated nose; a long slim neck; A high set bump; And long eyelashes, among other traits. These beauty standards “are rooted in the traditional appreciation of the Bedouin of the form and elegance of the camels”, explains Tharwat. But they do not improve the health of a camel or the capacity to provide transport, meat or milk.

The standards vary a little between different breeds of Camel dromedarius. The most popular breeds for festivals, explains Tharwat, include the Majaheem, which are often black and known for their high dairy yield, and the Maghateer, which range from white to light brown, and are known for their “elegant appearance”.

For the Majaheem, the long and attacked ears are the most desirable; For Maghateer, it is the shorts that are stung back. To produce the most beautiful competitors, the owners use advanced reproduction techniques. But some go much further.

Illegal interventions include filling injections in the lip area and nose, stretching and binding lips, ear cutting, widening of narine and injected anesthesia that makes the lips more drooping and by extension, more attractive. Some owners also inject their camels with testosterone, which modifies the shape of animals, partly by increasing muscle growth.

But these improvements have consequences: short-term pain, infections and distress are some of the immediate concerns for camels, explains Tharwat, but many procedures can also cause chronic health problems. Botox can paralyze the nerves of the face, which makes the camel to eat and drink. The remodeling of the lips and ears can undermine the sensory function. And testosterone can make an infertile camel woman or remove milk production. Perhaps what is the most scary is that these interventions are not often carried out by professionals.

Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube stimulated the demand for female camels with the characteristics of a beauty queen.

Make animals more aesthetically attractive for their owners and other humans is by no means confined to the Arabic Peninsula. In the United States, people put the ears of their dogs and dock their tails – the practices prohibited in many countries but always accepted by the American Kennel Club as a means of helping certain breeds “perform the tasks they were supposed to do”. But it is difficult to argue that the cropped ears on a doberman have a useful value in addition to respecting a beauty standard. “These are amputations, simple and simple,” explains Barbara Hodges, director of defense and awareness of the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association.

The most in -depth investigation into the cosmetic camel practices of camel took place in Saudi Arabia 7.^th The annual camel festival which took place from December 2022 to January 2023. An inspection of some 12,385 dromedar camels on two different sites of the festival revealed that almost 8% had been falsified, according to a newspaper of the Open veterinary newspaper From last March by Tharwat and the colleague Abdulla al-Hawas. The most common procedure: stretching lips. Almost 8% of the inspected camels also had unusually high testosterone levels, which indicates that they had been injected, probably as they grew up.

What this investigation has found no evidence of a rare practice which seems to have been imagined by David Cronenberg: surgically modifying the bump. “It represents one of the most extreme and risky procedures,” explains Tharwat. A bump that is large, high and close to the tail is considered the most attractive, but not all camels are built like that. “Because the bump contains fat reserves and is at the heart of the energy balance of the camel, surgical modification could have serious metabolic and structural consequences, including infection, atrophy or even death.”

The dromedary has a legendary history in the Middle East and North Africa. The nomadic Bedouins domesticated the animal about 4,000 years ago, and this remains vital for their culture and, more broadly, for the Arab people. A marvel of adaptation of the desert, the camel could be the most recognizable end among the megafauna. Even in the West, most schoolchildren know that these humpy hooves can pass without water for a disproportionate section, even in winter, when desert plants wear more humidity. And whoever heard a roar of camel does not forget it.

But the modern world presents challenges to which the camel has not evolved to face. Although beauty standards are not entirely contemporary – the liaison and formatting of the ear have been used for years – new technologies have increased the damage potential, says Tharwat. As the creature’s digital imprint develops, it also has a world interest in camel festivals. The role of the camel in Arabic culture – traditionally as a beast of burden, livestock and symbol of heritage – changes. As an owner quoted in the Heritage The paper says it: “Technology changes the way we aim for camels.”

And, for some, this view is not so pretty.

Lead image: VD Image Lab / Shutterstock

• Felipe Ossa

  Published on August 5, 2025

  Felipe OSSA is a journalist and playwright and currently post-baccalaureate in ecology, evolution and environmental biology at Columbia University.