My friends. Ohhhh my friends. What a wonderful, wonderful world we live in.

Did you know that somewhere in the world, possibly right at this moment, robots are racing camels? It’s true.

Apparently, the wildly popular sport of camel racing had just a teensy bit of a dark side:

Camel racing has been around for thousands of years. “The Sport of Sheiks” almost exclusively utilized small children, usually boys around the age of four, to ride and direct the camels. Often, the boys would be starved to be as light as possible. Many of the boys used for the races were often sold to race organizers or camel owners, and there was an active child slave trade for camel jockeys, involving victims of kidnapping or the children of destitute families who sold them into servitude.

Yeaaaaah. Whoops.

The elegant solution? Robots. Ranging from the realistic:

To the simplistic:

Not only do the robots save the lives of these poor boys, it also allows the owners to take a more active role. If you’re going to drop the kind of cash it takes to enter into a competitive breeding and racing program, wouldn’t you rather be holding the remote control than just sitting on the sidelines watching?

What is it about robots riding camels that is so outrageously awesome? It’s like the sport of the future mixed with the sport of the past.

How is this not popular in the U.S.? How is it not televised?

WHY AM I NOT WATCHING IT RIGHT NOW??