عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

AlUla Camel Cup to be Organized in March Under the Patronage of Saudi Crown Prince

Inscriptions showing beauty in the ancient history of AlUla (Royal Commission for AlUla website)
Inscriptions showing beauty in the ancient history of AlUla (Royal Commission for AlUla website)
TT
20
TT

AlUla Camel Cup to be Organized in March Under the Patronage of Saudi Crown Prince

Inscriptions showing beauty in the ancient history of AlUla (Royal Commission for AlUla website)
Inscriptions showing beauty in the ancient history of AlUla (Royal Commission for AlUla website)

Under the patronage of Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Chairman of the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), AlUla Camel Cup will be held from March 14-17, with a grand prize pool of SR80 million.

The RCU said that the AlUla Camel Cup is organized by RCU in collaboration with the Saudi Camel Racing Federation.

The event seeks to develop camel sport as a basic component of the Kingdom's cultural heritage and will be pinnacle of the Kingdom's camel-racing season.

Amr AlMadani, CEO of the Royal Commission for AlUla said: “The AlUla Camel Cup will celebrate the most noble of Saudi Arabian sporting traditions, welcoming royalty VIPS, the elite of the sport and many distinguished guests to the most glorious of settings for this illustrious occasion.”

For his part, Mahmoud Suleiman Albalawi, Executive Director of the Saudi Camel Racing Federation, said: “The pinnacle of the Saudi Arabian camel racing season, which will crown a Champion of Champions, can have no better setting than the performance grade track at AlUla, a jewel of the desert where tradition meets modernity.

AlUla Camel Cup is one of the flagship sports events of AlUla Moments 2023 calendar of events and festivals, which includes five major festivals and six marque events. Other sports events taking place include “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Endurance Cup in AlUla 2023, “AlUla Trail Race", and the "Saudi Tour".

Most Viewed

 
Varieties

What the Shell: Scientists Marvel as NZ Snail Lays Egg from Neck 

This handout picture taken on September 18, 2024 and released by the New Zealand Department of Conservation on May 8, 2025 shows a Mount Augustus snail laying an egg through its neck in Hokitika, New Zealand. (Lisa Flanagan / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
This handout picture taken on September 18, 2024 and released by the New Zealand Department of Conservation on May 8, 2025 shows a Mount Augustus snail laying an egg through its neck in Hokitika, New Zealand. (Lisa Flanagan / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
TT
20
TT

What the Shell: Scientists Marvel as NZ Snail Lays Egg from Neck 

This handout picture taken on September 18, 2024 and released by the New Zealand Department of Conservation on May 8, 2025 shows a Mount Augustus snail laying an egg through its neck in Hokitika, New Zealand. (Lisa Flanagan / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
This handout picture taken on September 18, 2024 and released by the New Zealand Department of Conservation on May 8, 2025 shows a Mount Augustus snail laying an egg through its neck in Hokitika, New Zealand. (Lisa Flanagan / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)

A rare New Zealand snail has been filmed for the first time squeezing an egg from its neck, delighting scientists trying to save the critically endangered meat-eating mollusk.

Threatened by coal mining in New Zealand's South Island, a small population of the Mount Augustus snail was transplanted from its forest habitat almost 20 years ago to live in chilled containers tended by humans.

Little is known about the reproduction of the shellbound critters, which can grow so large that New Zealand's conservation department calls them "giants of the snail world".

A conservation ranger said she was gobsmacked to witness a captive snail laying an egg from its neck -- a reproductive act well documented in other land snails but never filmed for this species.

"It's remarkable that in all the time we've spent caring for the snails, this is the first time we've seen one lay an egg," conservation ranger Lisa Flanagan said this week.

"We caught the action when we were weighing the snail. We turned it over to be weighed and saw the egg just starting to emerge from the snail."

Conservation department scientist Kath Walker said hard shells made it difficult to mate -- so some snails instead evolved a special "genital pore" under their head.

The Mount Augustus snail "only needs to peek out of its shell to do the business," she said.

The long-lived snails can grow to the size of a golf ball and their eggs can take more than a year to hatch.

They eat earthworms, according to New Zealand's conservation department, which they slurp up "like we eat spaghetti".

Conservation efforts suffered a drastic setback in 2011, when a faulty temperature gauge froze 800 Mount Augustus snails to death inside their climate-controlled containers.

Fewer than 2,000 snails currently live in captivity, while small populations have been re-established in the New Zealand wild.