What a gorgeous hump you have!

(03:18) Rough Cut

Apr. 25 - Saudi Arabia holds a camel beauty contest, judging the animals by their health, head, eyes, cheek-bones and legs.

The legs are long, the eyes wide, the bodies curvaceous.

Contestants in this Saudi-style beauty pageant have all the features you might expect anywhere else in the world, but with one crucial difference - the competitors are camels.

This week, the Qahtani tribe of western Saudi Arabia has been welcoming entrants to its "Mazayen al-Ibl" competition, a parade of the "most beautiful camels" in the desolate desert region of Guwei'iyya 120 km (75 miles) west of Riyadh.

While tremendous oil wealth has brought rapid and often destabilising modernisation to the vast desert state of Saudi Arabia from both inside the Arab world and beyond, camels are celebrated as symbolic of the world of the Bedouin Arab.

Soundbites:

Sheikh Omer Bin Fahed, Head of the camel contest, (Arabic)

Mohammed Bin Nase Al Ghahtani, Head of the jury at the contest, (Arabic)