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C of Colombian tarantulas , jumbo cockroaches and Scorpio the Scorpion that were crammed into a bag and illegally bandage for Europe were seized last week by authority at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá , Colombia .
airdrome police force spotted the living cargo in luggage belonging to two German citizen who were impart the country , and they alerted the Ministry of Environment , agency representatives say in a statementon Dec. 2 .
Tarantulas were among the over 300 living arthropods that authorities recently confiscated at Colombia’s El Dorado International Airport.
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" Despite , like these citizens , having supposed pedantic or inquiry purpose , any probe must have expressed permission from the environmental authorities , " Secretary of the Environment Carolina Urrutia Vásquez tell in the statement ( translated from Spanish ) . The grasp traveler did n’t have the licence and license required in Colombia to hoard and transport arthropods in Colombia , and they could face fine as well as civic and criminal pursuance for their natural process , concord to the program line .
Investigators limit that the smuggled arthropod had been collected in the northeast of Bogotá in Boyacá , in the municipality of San Luis de Gaceno . The unlawful cargo included mortal in the Scorpio family Buthidae ; the giant roach family Blaberidae ; and the wanderer families Barychelidae ( trapdoor spiders ) and Theraphosidae ( tarantulas ) .
Officials found giant cockroaches in the Blaberidae family among the smuggled arthropods.
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In September , Colombian authority scotch another illegal exportation operation , confiscating 3,493 shark fins and 256 pound ( 117 kilo ) of fish swimming bladders that were head from Bogotá ’s airport to Hong Kong . The drome " continues to be a focus of attending for wildlife trafficking in Bogotá , " Secretary Urrutia Vásquez said in the instruction . In 2021 alone , officials recoup more than 11,000 trafficked specimens at the El Dorado International Airport ; of those , 7,058 were subsist , ministry official reported .
primitively published on Live Science .
