truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

News of the Weird informed you in 2007 of camel beauty pageants in Saudi Arabia, but the obsession with the animal runs deeper, based in part on nostalgia for the days when camels were important for transportation. Breeders cuddle and nuzzle them, and at the country's largest camel market near Riyadh in March 2008, they bought and sold based, one breeder told The New York Times, on the standards of "judging a beautiful girl. You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck." Said another, "See this one? She isn't married yet, this one. She's still a virgin. Look at the black eyes, the soft fur. ... Just like a girl going to a party." He added (after kissing the camel on the mouth), "My camels are like my children, my family." (In January, a prominent cleric issued a decree condemning the pride people take in their camels.)

At a March British soccer match between Blackpool and Burnley teams, greyhound owner Jane Holland was escorting her retired dog Fool's Mile for a presentation when the crowd noise evidently energized the champion racer, who broke away. "(W)hen she heard the crowd, she was off," said Holland, and Fool's Mile circled the track four times before being restrained. Said London's Sunday Telegraph, the dog appeared to be reliving her glory days.

On the South Boulder (Colo.) Creek Trail in January, as a woman was standing beside her bicycle, a cow wandered by and tipped her over (and then stepped on her legs before meandering off).

The purloined pooch, the small-town mayor, and now, the indictment! Mayor Grace Saenz-Lopez (Alice, Texas, pop. 19,000) and her twin sister were indicted in January for hiding evidence in a dognapping case. Saenz-Lopez had agreed to baby-sit a shih tzu but, alarmed by the dog's sickliness, she kept it and lied to the owners that it had died. When it was spotted at a local grooming service, Saenz-Lopez and her sister allegedly began a cover-up that included the mayor's once pretending to be her sister. The mayor told her lawyer that if not for her husband, she would go to jail "for the rest of (my) life" rather than give the dog back. Most recently, Saenz-Lopez reported that the dog had run away, but many of her constituents are skeptical.

Latest Ape-Human News: The 4th Texas Court of Appeals in January affirmed a lower court decision that monkeys and chimpanzees have no legal right to file lawsuits against an animal preserve for mistreatment. In Apeldoorn, Netherlands, however, one prominent member of the family is full of human nature: Sibu, an orang-utan at the Apenheul Primate Park, has so far rejected all overtures to mate with other orang-utans and instead appears smitten with blonde female zookeepers, especially those with tattoos, according to an October Reuters dispatch.

Latest Ape-Human News: The 4th Texas Court of Appeals in January affirmed a lower court decision that monkeys and chimpanzees have no legal right to file lawsuits against an animal preserve for mistreatment.