Police flagged down a bug smuggler attempting to flee Peru with 320 tarantulas strapped to his body.
The 28 year old South Korean was caught at the Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, Peru, after raising suspicion due to his abnormally “bulky” abdomen area. The man was detained by police, who discovered the hundreds of tarantulas, many as large as a human hand, alongside an additional 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants sealed inside plastic containers fastened to his midsection with heavy duty adhesive tape.
An investigation by the Peruvian environmental crimes prosecutor has been announced by SERFOR, the country’s national forestry and wildlife service.
The insects and arachnids are thought to originate from the Madre de Dios region, a part of the Peruvian Amazon. After the smuggler was detained, the creatures were placed in the care of authorities. “They were all illegally extracted and are part of illegal wildlife trafficking worth millions of dollars globally,” said Walter Silva, a wildlife specialist at SERFOR. According to Silva, cases of illegal wildlife smuggling rise in the weeks before Christmas, when they are sold to adventurous owners or collectors for higher prices than usual.
The smuggler caught at the Jorge Chávez International Airport is not alone in his endeavors. The trade of tarantulas and other bugs has become a rather lucrative (and illegal) business in the past few years, due to rising demands in the exotic pet and collectors markets. Some insects can even sell for prices over $100,000. The growth of the bug black market has also been facilitated by poor regulation and legislation surrounding the exotic animal trade, giving smugglers opportunities to transport all sorts of creatures across borders.
Poaching and smuggling has depleted local tarantula populations and threatened biodiversity in popular tarantula-trapping areas, including South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Professionals such as Dr. Lauren Weidner, director of the Forensic Entomology and Wildlife Laboratory at Arizona State University, are trying to crack down on the foreign insect market. However, difficulties arise when considering the scale at which the illegal trade is occurring. There’s not just one website where you go to and say ‘where are insects smuggled?’ and ‘where are they coming from?'” explained Dr. Weidner. She and her team are working to classify and catalogue the most commonly smuggled insects from around the world, using a collection of over 3,200 samples from countries such as Indonesia, Laos, Canada, and Mexico. When asked about the insects, Weidner says, “They’re not just going to sit in a warehouse as stored evidence from an old case, we’re going to be able to do something with them.”
