The title was just to catch your attention although many of you who know a dromedary is a camel are not fooled. The tidbit of news quoted below was picked up by most news services yesterday. It is real.
"Twelve camels have been disqualified from Saudi Arabia’s annual camel beauty contest after receiving botulinum toxin injections to make their pouts look more alluring".
It is amusing though more perplexing is the fact that where it took place human beauty contest is frowned upon - Saudi Arabia. In that part of the world, "frowned upon" also means: "no way - totally out of your mind to even attempt it".
The disqualified camels had Botox injections on their lips, not too differently from what comes out of human frailty though clearly not for the camel's benefit but for the descriminating eyes of the human judges. The whole idea was to make the camel's lips or their pouts a little more ... alluring? Seductive is not the word we'd use in the same sentence with camels but then what should it be when Botox injections are involved?
Apparently stiff upper lip is not the thing. It is the lower lip that entices. I'm not sure what other attributes are being judged in these contests. We can be certain, at least from what I gathered from the story, that the demure look shown on the photos to the right and bottom were not winning attributes. If Botox played a role the lip portion must be a heavily weighted category.
Dromedaries are single humped camels as opposed to the Bactrian variety, or double humped camels. Bactrian camels were excluded from the contest. Now we know humps don't count either. This brings us to what should be in the news but was squelched from wide dissemination. Camels (almost all from the Bactrian region) are protesting their exclusion from the contest, for one. Secondly, why are the judges made up of humans only. The protesters further claim that their complaint got nothing more than lip service from the organizers and sponsors. If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, who but fellow camels can claim the discerning eyes to make the proper scrutiny.
Bactrians are not quite done. Their peevishness go all the way back to the popularity of a particular unfiltered cigarette in earlier decades. That was one little footnote that now I know dromedaries were featured on packs of "Camels" and billboard advertising. The Bactrians, now angling down to pettiness, also complain about our idiomatic expression, "hump day" (referring to Wednesday) or "going over the hump", because clearly we are only referring to single Dromedarian hump. They may have a point because going over two humps, or double hump days offer a higher degree of difficulty and a more rewarding definition of achievment upon surviving through the middle of the week going over two humps instead of just one.
Bactrians are not quite done. Their peevishness go all the way back to the popularity of a particular unfiltered cigarette in earlier decades. That was one little footnote that now I know dromedaries were featured on packs of "Camels" and billboard advertising. The Bactrians, now angling down to pettiness, also complain about our idiomatic expression, "hump day" (referring to Wednesday) or "going over the hump", because clearly we are only referring to single Dromedarian hump. They may have a point because going over two humps, or double hump days offer a higher degree of difficulty and a more rewarding definition of achievment upon surviving through the middle of the week going over two humps instead of just one.
Camels are related to llamas and alpaca. The smaller cousins were likewise excluded from the contest. It is obvious they are not long legged enough. Besides, their crude behavior that involves high velocity spitting is not socially acceptable either. I understand camels do spit occasionally but they'd rather drool, and only in their own sudsy way. There is something too about the grace and flexibility that camels exhibit when they come down on their knees to accommodate their human riders. Notably, the camel equivalent of Miss Manners has some tips on the proper way to do that.
Contrary to common assumption camel humps do not store water. They store fat so that in lean times camels can draw from such reserve to keep them going. However, for the sake of physical proportions, camels can't have too much of it, while too little won't be acceptable either. Just enough of everything seems to be right, except that a good overhanging lower lip can be done to excess with all the upside of a well endowed feature of distinction.
Camels in Australia have an altogether different sets of issues. The camels there were brought from Afghanistan way back when. They're good at carrying loads over long distances in places as arid as the outback. They were undocumented, illegal immigrants and to this day are treated as such. When their usefulness ran its course in the advent of the railroad, they were let go en masse. They realize that a lot of different animals were brought in to Australia but why are sheep given privileged status? In fact, camels now are on their own in the outback. Granted their population continue to thrive, they have no proper accreditation. They are also calling out the kangaroos for not helping their cause. The kangaroos can't be blamed because they'd rather that camels get the attention so as to gain popularity as staple meat instead of kangaroo burger. There is a lot going on there, which is the more reason camels are a little antsy. They do have something to be thankful for though. Dingos have no particular interest in going after them. The wild dogs that are now a protected species prefer kangaroo meat. Again the more reason the 'roos are not on the side of the camels. Camels demand justice and not the objectification in some beauty contest.
The Sauidi's fascination with camels go back to the beginning of their history but I suspect Oscar winner Peter O' Toole, as Lawrence of Arabia, took the camel's popularity to its zenith. Omar Sharif's wide panoramic entrance on a camel was at that time the most expansive appearance of a single actor ever filmed. From that scene one is led to believe that the camel he was riding had to have had a gyroscope assist for Sherif Ali (played by Omar Sharif) to have made that long distance rifle shot with unerring accuracy.
By the way, camels take offense to the fable of the "camel's nose". According to that story, a camel begged its master to allow its nose into his tent, only to have his whole body occupy the tent all to itself. It is a metaphor for allowing one little innocuos act only to develop into a larger undesirable result. Camels claim that they will not do such a thing since they are well designed as a species to withstand all and every conceivable desert conditions. They have three sets of eyelids, hermetically actuated nose flaps, among many attributes to preclude begging for shelter into a cramped tent. Camels too are not too impressed with the slogan, "I'd walk a mile for a camel". It has no meaning to them. If anything, all they ever do and had done for man is to walk endless miles for him.
There it is. We've learned something about camels. We learned too about something else. Small, seemingly harmless habits could develop into something that can get out of control. Be mindful though, camels remind us that that metaphor should never be ascribed to them.
Contrary to common assumption camel humps do not store water. They store fat so that in lean times camels can draw from such reserve to keep them going. However, for the sake of physical proportions, camels can't have too much of it, while too little won't be acceptable either. Just enough of everything seems to be right, except that a good overhanging lower lip can be done to excess with all the upside of a well endowed feature of distinction.
Camels in Australia have an altogether different sets of issues. The camels there were brought from Afghanistan way back when. They're good at carrying loads over long distances in places as arid as the outback. They were undocumented, illegal immigrants and to this day are treated as such. When their usefulness ran its course in the advent of the railroad, they were let go en masse. They realize that a lot of different animals were brought in to Australia but why are sheep given privileged status? In fact, camels now are on their own in the outback. Granted their population continue to thrive, they have no proper accreditation. They are also calling out the kangaroos for not helping their cause. The kangaroos can't be blamed because they'd rather that camels get the attention so as to gain popularity as staple meat instead of kangaroo burger. There is a lot going on there, which is the more reason camels are a little antsy. They do have something to be thankful for though. Dingos have no particular interest in going after them. The wild dogs that are now a protected species prefer kangaroo meat. Again the more reason the 'roos are not on the side of the camels. Camels demand justice and not the objectification in some beauty contest.
The Sauidi's fascination with camels go back to the beginning of their history but I suspect Oscar winner Peter O' Toole, as Lawrence of Arabia, took the camel's popularity to its zenith. Omar Sharif's wide panoramic entrance on a camel was at that time the most expansive appearance of a single actor ever filmed. From that scene one is led to believe that the camel he was riding had to have had a gyroscope assist for Sherif Ali (played by Omar Sharif) to have made that long distance rifle shot with unerring accuracy.
By the way, camels take offense to the fable of the "camel's nose". According to that story, a camel begged its master to allow its nose into his tent, only to have his whole body occupy the tent all to itself. It is a metaphor for allowing one little innocuos act only to develop into a larger undesirable result. Camels claim that they will not do such a thing since they are well designed as a species to withstand all and every conceivable desert conditions. They have three sets of eyelids, hermetically actuated nose flaps, among many attributes to preclude begging for shelter into a cramped tent. Camels too are not too impressed with the slogan, "I'd walk a mile for a camel". It has no meaning to them. If anything, all they ever do and had done for man is to walk endless miles for him.
There it is. We've learned something about camels. We learned too about something else. Small, seemingly harmless habits could develop into something that can get out of control. Be mindful though, camels remind us that that metaphor should never be ascribed to them.
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