A camel beauty pageant in Oman has been plunged into chaos as 20 of its competitors were disqualified after their owners enhanced their humps and other features using injectable fillers, silicone wax and Botox.
Last month, veterinary inspectors at the 2026 Camel Beauty Show Festival in Al Musanaa, Oman, discovered that the camels had undergone several cosmetic procedures to enlarge the size of their humps using a mix of injectables similar to dermal fillers used on humans.
According to Vice and Forbes, the disqualified camels had received a mix of injectables, including hyaluronic acid injections for pouty lips, dermal fillers around their nose, Botox to soften their faces and silicone wax to inflate their humps.
Festival organizers have said they are working to halt “all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels,” adding that they would impose “strict penalties on manipulators” going forward.
The camels are judged on four key features: their coat, neck, head and humps. The winning animals usually have the shiniest hair, a long and muscular neck, long eyelashes and plump lips, and, of course, two plump and defined humps.
In the camel breeding industry, pageants are taken very seriously since the trophy comes with a multi-million dollar prize pot, investment and increased tourism. Winning at the event will also increase the value of the camel when it goes on sale.
These types of enhancements have been rife in the camel breeding industry in recent years, with officials at the 40-day-long King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Saudi Arabia, the largest in the world, barring owners from enhancing the lips, noses, heads and body parts of the animals. At that festival, there is usually more than $60 million of prize money at stake.
In 2018, 12 camels were disqualified from the event for having Botox injections from horse breeders, while 40 camels were disqualified in 2021 for allegedly having stretched noses.
Rubber bands were also used on animals to make body parts bigger than normal by restricting the flow of blood, according to the BBC.
In a 2021 report, a Saudi Press Agency statement quoted by The Guardian said, “The club is keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels.”
Judges at the event now use advanced technology to uncover tampering with camels. All contestants are first led into a hall where their external appearance and movements are examined by specialists, before they undergo an X-ray and other tests on their heads, necks and torsos.
The procedures have been labelled as animal cruelty by animal rights activists and members of the veterinary community, since the treatments can be painful and have life-threatening side effects like severe pain, infections and bruising.
Silicone, meanwhile, can migrate to other parts of the body and cause complications.
