Cloning is not just for those who own elite camels. Sometimes, customers want to regenerate their beloved animal after sudden death.
Cloning is in high demand in the competitive world of camel beauty pageants, with scientists at a Dubai clinic working round the clock to produce carbon-copy animals.
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Not every animal has the sought-after ridged lips and a long, graceful neck, but technology now allows wealthy customers to transform their most beautiful camel into just one like it.
At the Center for Breeding Biotechnology, with views of the towering skyscrapers of the United Arab Emirates city, scientists gaze at microscopes while dozens of cloned camels roam outside.
“There is such a demand for cloning of camels that we are not able to meet it,” Nisar Wani, the center’s scientific director, told AFP.
Beauty pageants aren’t the only driver of the camel cloning industry. Many customers want to breed racing camels, or animals that produce large amounts of milk.
But the “beauty queens” are the most popular order. Gulf customers will pay between 200,000 and 400,000 dirhams ($54,500-$109,000) to imitate a dromedary.
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Camels are paraded in dusty racetracks around the area and scrutinized by judges, with occasional discoveries of Botox and cosmetic fillers adding to the spice of scandal in high-stakes competitions.
Saud al-Otaibi, who runs a camel auction in Kuwait, said customers’ decisions about the animal’s appearance are key to his business.
“The price of a camel is determined by its beauty, health and how famous the breed is,” he told AFP.
When it comes to young animals, “customers are eager to see the mother to determine its beauty before purchasing a camel,” he said.
don’t go back
Twelve years ago, Dubai claimed the world’s first cloned camel.
Injaz, a woman whose name means achievement in Arabic, was born on 8 April 2009 after more than five years of work by Wani and others.
Since Injaz was born, there was no turning back.
Wani proudly said, “Now we are having 10 to 20 plus babies every year. This year we have 28 pregnancies (so far), last year we had 20.”
The center is churning out “racing champions, high milk-producing animals … and winners of beauty pageants called beauty queens,” said Wani, sitting in a laboratory next to the preserved body of a cloned camel in a glass container. .
Known as the “ships of the desert”, and once used for transportation across the sands of the Arabian Peninsula, camels are a symbol of traditional Gulf culture.
Now, having been replaced by gas-guzzling SUVs as the main means of transportation, they are used for racing, meat and milk.
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“We have cloned some camels which produce more than 35 liters of milk in a day,” said Wani, adding that normal camels have an average of five liters of milk.
Camel milk is usually found next to regular milk in supermarkets in the Gulf, while meat products such as camel carpaccio are served in fancy restaurants.
‘The saddest moment’
The cloning of dogs, cows and horses is popular in many countries, although animal rights groups say the process causes undue suffering to animals that provide egg cells and carry embryos.
With orders on the fly in cloning clinics in the United Arab Emirates, scientists are developing new techniques to keep up with the pace.
The female camel gives birth to only one calf every two years, which includes a gestation period of 13 months.
But breeding centers use surrogacy techniques to increase the number of offspring, whether through cloning or conventional breeding.
“In this process we call multiple ovulation and embryo transfer, we super-stimulate champion females and produce them with champion males,” explained Wani.
“We collect embryos from these females after seven to eight days and then we put them into surrogate mothers, which are very normal animals.”
Alternatively, cloned camels can be created by placing DNA from cells in the ovaries of the desired animal into eggs taken from surrogate mothers.
“These mothers give birth to babies, and instead of having one baby at a time in a year, we can produce multiple calves from these animals.”
Cloning is not just for those who own elite camels. Sometimes, customers want to regenerate their beloved animal after sudden death.
Wani, who started working at the clinic in 2003, said the proudest moment for him was the birth of Injaz – and the worst was his death.
“She died this year,” he said. “When we came in the morning she had broken her uterus. We tried to save as much as we could. It was the saddest moment.”
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