Smuggler arrested with 300 tarantulas strapped to his body

Police in Peru have arrested a man caught trying to leave the country with 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants strapped to his body.

The 28-year-old South Korean national was stopped at Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima on November 8 after officials noticed that his stomach area looked “bulky,” according to a statement from the country’s national forestry and wildlife service, SERFOR, published November 13.

The insects were packaged inside plastic containers and bags strapped to the man’s abdomen.

A search revealed hundreds of insects packaged inside ziplock bags strapped to his abdomen, according to the statement.

Police detained the man, who was traveling to South Korea via France, and Peru’s environmental crimes prosecutor has opened an investigation, it added.

The insects are thought to have been taken from the Madre de Dios region in the Peruvian Amazon. They are now in the care of authorities.

Tarantulas are a threatened species, Walter Silva, a wildlife specialist at SERFOR, explained in the statement.

SERFOR officials display the confiscated insects.

“They were all illegally extracted and are part of illegal wildlife trafficking worth millions of dollars globally,” Silva said.

Peru is not the only South American nation facing problems with wildlife trafficking.

In December 2021, authorities in Colombia seized at least 232 tarantulas, 67 cockroaches, nine spider eggs, and a scorpion with seven of its young, all hidden in a suitcase at the El Dorado airport in Bogotá.

And in September that year Colombian officials confiscated a shipment of almost 3,500 shark fins bound for Hong Kong.