Expats arrive in the UAE, and they hear about camel beauty contests, and they assume it must be a joke.

To the average human, camels are remarkably homely. A horse? Now there is a sleek animal. But a camel? It may rank with the hyena as the ugliest land animal around.

Turns out, camel beauty contests are serious topics in this part of the world, and the cool winter months are the time for the various regional pageants.

This was the first paragraph of a front-page story in The National:

“A long nose, a skinny neck, droopy lips, thick legs, big feet and a hump perfectly placed on her lower back. Wadibich has it all.”

Wadibich would be the camel. A black camel, from Saudi Arabia. Who won the beauty contests for black camels at the annual Al Dhafra Festival, held deep in the UAE/Abu Dhabi desert at the little town of Madinat Zayed.

Our reporter, the culturally attuned Anna Zacharias, talked to the owner of Wadibich and he said he would never sell his beauty queen — even after he was offered 3.7 million dirhams (about $1 million) just after she won the contest.

The judging of these affairs is very serious, not least because being a champion beauty makes a camel far more valuable. Anna’s story passes on this fact: A camel named Mabrukan sold for a record 15 million dirhams (about $4 million) at the Al Dhafra Festival in 2008.

What are judges looking for? Some of the qualities mentioned above, but camels need to show some congeniality, too — just like Miss America does. “Temperament and grace” are worth 15 percent of the camel’s score from the judges.

Said one: “If the camel is angry, they don’t see how it is beautiful.”

One of the veteran judges was asked to recall the most beautiful camel he has seen. “Every year there’s another beautiful camel,” he said. “In my memory, there are many.”

Basic affection for camels in Arabia is understandable. The “ships of the desert” were essential to survival among Bedouins, as recently as 70, 80 years ago.

But “beauty”? Most of us would have to be out in the desert a very long time before we associated that word with a camel.