A South Korean national was caught while leaving the country with over 300 tarantula spiders strapped to his body.
According to CNN, police in Peru arrested a 28-year-old man who had strapped 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes, and nine bullet ants to his body.
The smuggler was stopped at Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima earlier in November 2024, after the airport authorities noticed that his stomach area looked “bulky.”
As per Peru’s national forestry and wildlife service, SERFOR, a statement published on November 13, 2024, after searching the suspect smugglers, officials found hundreds of insects strapped to his abdomen in a ziplock bag.
Police arrested the smuggler who was trying to travel to South Korea via France, and the environmental crimes prosecutor of the country has begun an investigation.
It is believed that the insects were taken from the Madre de Dios region in the Peruvian Amazon.
Moreover, a wildlife specialist at SERFOR, Walter Silva, noted that tarantulas are a threatened species and “they were all illegally extracted and are part of illegal wildlife trafficking worth millions of dollars globally.”
Furthermore, the spiders and other insects are now under the care of Peru authorities.
To note, similar smuggling activities were reported in 2021 in Colombia also when at least 232 tarantulas, 67 cockroaches, nine spider eggs, and a scorpion with seven of its young were caught at the El Dorado airport in Bogotá.
