A falcon was sold for $320,000 at an auction in Saudi Arabia. In a country where camels are paraded in beauty contests, desert animals are both cultural heritage and prized assets, driving a lucrative breeding industry. Falcons and other birds of prey are coveted in the Gulf: They are pampered, even getting their own seats on commercial flights. Hunters use them to chase the houbara bustard across deserts in the Gulf, Iraq, and Pakistan — not just for sport, but also for meat believed to have aphrodisiac qualities.
The elite game famously ensnared a group of Qatari sheikhs hunting in Iraq a decade ago: The group was kidnapped by an Iranian proxy and released after Doha paid one of the largest ransoms in history (dwarfing the price of their prized falcons).