Watch video: Camel gives warm welcome to owner
The animal kneels down in front of the man who tenderly feeds it
Cairo: A camel has reacted with jubilation on seeing its owner after absence, according to a social media video.
The footage shows the camel kneeling down in front of the Saudi owner. The animal is also seen in a video clip gleefully eating bread from the sitting man’s hands and later nibbling at crumbs held by his mouth.
Neither the exact place nor date of the filming is clear.
Camels are a popular animal closely linked to heritage in Saudi Arabia. The animal has long been dubbed as the “ship of the desert”, being the lifeline for desert dwellers.
Online videos have recently gone viral showing camel owners highly prizing the animal and displaying strong bonds that sometimes went to the extreme.
Last month, Saudi police said they had arrested a man in Al Dawadmi governorate, north east of Riyadh, and accused him of deliberately damaging a banknote and publicising the illegal act in a video clip.
The man appeared in a video feeding a camel with A SR500 bill, an act that sparked outrage. In the footage, the man can be seen offering the note to the animal that took it for food and quickly munched it.
Saudi Arabia has designated 2024 as the Year of Camels, taking the shape of diverse programmes to boost national efforts to develop the camel sector.
In recent years, the camel business has remarkably grown in the kingdom. There are around 1.8 million camels with a market value of over SR50 billion in Saudi Arabia, according to official figures.
The kingdom annually hosts the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, one of the world’s largest in the field.