Mongol herders perform a coaxing ritual to encourage a female camel to accept a new-born calf or to adopt an orphan. The mother is tied close to the calf and a singer begins a monotone song accompanied by gestures and chanting. Performance of the ritual takes place at twilight and requires great skill in handling camels.
-Coaxing Ritual for Camels, Mongolia, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, 2015
Sheepherders perform a bloodier form of this ritual by jacketting bummer lambs and grafting them to wet ewes, fitting them into the flayed skins of stillborns whose mothers recognize their scent and thus allow another’s orphan to suckle. When I asked KhairAllah about the Saudi taste for stillborn camel meat, he said only one word, Harām, Sinful!