You are looking at victims of India’s ‘petfluencers’

Most unboxing videos follow a predictable script: an exuberant influencer slashes open the packaging, reaches inside, and pulls out the prize. Pets Man’s post was no different, except for one detail. This influencer was wary of handling the contents of the package: a pair of live emperor scorpions.
Native to West Africa, emperor scorpions are classified as “exotic” in India. But watching the influencer handle the crudely packaged box — containing paper filler, two plastic containers into which each scorpion was stuffed — one would imagine it contained nothing more sentient than a pair of socks. The month-old video, titled ‘My New Pet: Scorpion Unboxing And Setup’, has racked up over 29,000 views on YouTube, with viewers demanding a sequel. Pets Man shows how to house and feed them, but skips one crucial point: how to acquire them legally.

Crossing The Line
Conservationists estimate that over 90% of exotic animals in India have been illegally trafficked, mainly from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. “The trafficking of exotic animals has been happening for a long time. But animals were rarely intercepted because they were not previously protected under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Once they crossed customs jurisdiction — by airways, waterways, railways or roadways — no law-enforcement agency could do much for them,” explains Pawan Sharma, founder of Resquink Association for Wildlife Welfare (RAWW), a nonprofit that helps law enforcement agencies in the rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked exotic animals. “Exotic animals gained legal protection only after the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 was amended in 2022 and enforced in 2023,” he adds.

With the law to support them, vigilance stepped up and seizures increased — fivefold at Mumbai Airport between 2023-24 and 2024-25, according to media reports.

Yet, experts say, these seizures represent only a small stream compared with the sweeping tide of illicit consignments slipping through the borders. Tracking smuggling via seaways and roadways is even harder.

Across all routes, however, trafficked animals are expertly concealed, which makes them difficult to intercept. On flights, tarantulas, turtle hatchlings and iguanas have been found sedated inside cake containers, chocolate boxes, or beneath tubs of ornamental fish; birds have been stuffed between packets of frozen poultry; and tortoises have been sealed inside their carapaces with tape. Under these brutal conditions, 30-70% of trafficked animals die in transit. And because they arrive hungry, traumatised, and possibly diseased, it’s not hard to imagine how many more perish upon arrival.

Pet Shop Buys
“Around 80% of the exotic animals being trafficked today are intended for the pet market,” Sharma says. Naturally, the sordid side of the trade doesn’t make the final cut of an Instagram reel. Social media and social messaging apps have emerged as key drivers of sales, where an unholy trinity of “petfluencers”, breeders, and pet shop owners peddle animals as if they were appliances, touting their beauty, supposed ease of care, and rarity.
A recent blog by the wildlife trade monitoring organisation TRAFFIC counted 87 different species seized from flight passengers between Jan 2022 and May 2025, seven of them critically endangered. This May, three spider-tailed horned vipers, endemic to western Iran and eastern Iraq, were found, along with 49 other reptiles, in the baggage of a passenger travelling from Bangkok to Mumbai — the first publicly reported seizure of this species in Southeast Asia.

A wide variety of animals are trafficked these days, including tarantulas and fish, like the critically endangered Barca Snakehead ( Channa barca ), which can cost Rs 1.5 lakh a pair. But according to TRAFFIC, reptiles constitute the bulk of the exotic animal trade, accounting for 92.7% of all individual animals seized from flight baggage in the last three and a half years.

Owning an exotic animal is not illegal (unless stated in Schedule IV of the Wildlife Protection Act), but registering the animal on the govt’s PARIVESH 2.0 portal is mandatory. “This involves paperwork to prove where the animal was procured, its provenance and whether it was bred in captivity or wild-caught — the latter being illegal,” says Sharma. “I can import an exotic animal legally if I follow these procedures.”

Yet, with dealers offering the same animals off the books at a fraction of the cost and time — without an ownership certificate — buyers are easily lured. Some dealers even produce fake PARIVESH certificates, and although these can be verified with the forest department, few buyers go to the trouble.

Health & Environmental Risks
Beyond legal violations, the exotic animal trade is rife with health and environmental risks. Trafficked animals can be carriers of zoonotic diseases, transmissible to humans and other animals. “You can contract salmonella from reptiles, aspergillosis (a fungal lung disease) from birds and TB from pygmy marmosets or pocket monkeys,” says Dr Rina Dev, an avian and exotic animal specialist who runs the RiWild Sanctuary and Charitable Trust.
Dealers often convince buyers that exotic animals are easy to raise and require the animal equivalent of a dal-roti diet. “They say ‘feed the bird seeds three times a day and you’re done’. But because these birds are raised exclusively on a seed diet, they develop fatty liver,” Dr Dev explains. “The birds I treat often come in with nutrition-related problems, such as pathological bone fractures and poor feather conditions. When the animal’s nutrition is bad, their immunity is bad, making them susceptible to secondary infections.” Their health can be further compromised by their ersatz home which, despite best efforts, can fail to mimic their natural environment.

People are thrilled with the initial novelty of their new exotic pet, but rarely follow through with the required care, Dr Dev observes. “They own birds worth Rs 1–2 lakh, but refuse to spend on veterinary treatment. By the time they bring the animal to the clinic, it’s often on its deathbed,” she says. Unwilling to care for an ailing animal, pet owners and even breeders abandon it at rehab centres like hers.

Unwanted and ailing animals are also abandoned in urban forests, water bodies and drains, where they run the risk of infecting other animals and disrupting the ecological balance of local habitats.

Need Of The Hour
The illegal exotic animal trade is like a game of Whac-A-Mole: close one channel of trade, and another emerges. This is why a multi-pronged strategy is needed to rein in trafficking networks, says Sunil Limaye, former chief wildlife warden of Maharashtra. “Several things need to be done. Emerging trade issues must be closely studied. The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) monitors these routes, but conservation-led nonprofits should analyse trade news and data from WCCB to identify patterns and trends that can help enforcement agencies. There needs to be close coordination between all enforcement agencies — the forest and revenue departments, police, customs, excise, and Indo-Tibetan Border Police. We also need international cooperation with source countries to nip the problem in the bud. At the same time, we should build the capacity of forest, customs and WCCB officials directly involved in trade monitoring and animal protection and equip them with the technology and tools to track and intercept perpetrators. And finally, doggedly follow up cases in court,” he says.

Sharma cites the lack of unified data on seizures as another problem that needs fixing. “There is currently no centralised system for wildlife crime data, since cases are handled by different departments like forest, police, customs, and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. This needs to be resolved.”
But the most effective way to bring trafficking networks to their knees, Limaye emphasises, is to stifle demand. “People often don’t realise that by buying exotic animals, they are participating in an illegal activity,” he says. “There should be no trade in wildlife at all. People should refuse to buy these animals as pets. Wildlife belongs in the wild, not in your home.”