Saudi cracks down on cosmetically enhanced camels at beauty pageants

Saudi Arabia has disqualified 40 camels - which received botox injections - from the popular King Abdulaziz Camel Festival.

The annual pageant which kicked off earlier this month, invites the breeders of the most beautiful camels to compete for some $66 million in prize money.

Making the camels more attractive by botox injections, facelifts and other cosmetic alterations is strictly prohibited, reports 7news.com.

Jurors decide the winner based on the shape of the camels' heads, necks, humps, dress and postures.

Judges at the monthlong festival in the desert northeast of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, are increasing their crackdown on artificially enhanced camels by using "specialised and advanced" technology to detect tampering.

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.

However, the club is keen to stop all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels," the Saudi Press Agency reported Wednesday, adding organisers would "impose strict penalties on manipulators."