Dubai’s crown prince has bought a female camel at a beauty pageant for a record $2.92 million.
Sheik Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, purchased the camel at a nine day long camel beauty pageant in UAE capital Abu Dhabi.
The beauty pageant, the Mazayin Dhafra Camel Festival, featured more than 10,000 camels that raced the region competing for prize money.
Camels were registered for the beauty contest in several categories, defined by age and skin colour.
Five judges asses the camels' bodies as a whole and their necks, heads, lips, noses, humps, legs and feet separately.
The money and cars for the camel beauty contest were donated by the members of Abu Dhabi's ruling family, which organised the festival in a bid to preserve the nomadic way of life in the desert that predates the discovery of oil in the region in the 1960s.
Sheik Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, bought a total of $4.49 million dollars worth of camels throughout the festival.