Camel Beauty Contests Have a Cheating Problem That Won’t Stop
nip something in the bud: to stop a problem early, before it grows bigger or worse
Every year, thousands of camels compete in beauty contests across the Middle East. The biggest is Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival. It runs for a full month in the desert near Riyadh. The total prize money is about $66 million. Judges look at the shape of each camel’s head, neck, hump, and posture. A winning camel can be worth millions.
With so much money involved, some breeders cheat. In 2018, organizers caught 12 camels with Botox injections. They tried to nip the problem in the bud with warnings and penalties. It didn’t work. By 2021, the cheating had exploded. Inspectors found 43 camels with Botox in their lips and heads. Some had hormone treatments to grow bigger muscles. Others had rubber bands around body parts to make them look fuller. A few breeders had even stretched their camels’ noses by hand. In total, organizers dealt with 147 cases of tampering that year.
The pattern repeated in 2026 at a camel festival in Oman. Twenty camels were disqualified after veterinarians found Botox, dermal fillers, and silicone in their humps.
Officials keep promising stricter rules. Breeders keep finding new ways to cheat. The poor camels, of course, have no say in any of it.
Sample sentences
The new guy I hired keeps showing up 20 minutes late. I need to nip that in the bud before everyone starts doing it.
The company noticed a few fake reviews online and nipped the problem in the bud before customers lost trust.
The city started fixing small cracks in the bridge right away. They wanted to nip any bigger problems in the bud before they got dangerous.
Origin
The expression comes from gardening. When you nip a bud off a plant, you remove it before it can bloom. Over time, the phrase became a way to talk about stopping any problem at an early stage.
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20 Camels Disqualified From Beauty Contest in ‘Hump Inflation’ Scandal