Man Hiding Tarantulas, Centipedes and Ants Is Stopped From Boarding Flight

Something about a man who was trying to board a plane last week in Lima, Peru, caused customs officers at the international airport outside the capital to do a double take: He had an extraordinarily swollen belly.

They asked him to lift his shirt.

When he did, they found he was carrying 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants. Each of the bugs was crawling around inside its own small plastic bag, where they were obscured by filter paper, according to the National Forest and Wildlife Service of Peru. The bags were reinforced with strong adhesive tape and attached to two girdles that were wrapped around the man’s body.

In all, the man was carrying 35 adult tarantulas, each about the size of an average hand, and 285 juvenile tarantulas, the wildlife service said.

All of the critters found were native to the Amazon region of Peru, said Walter Silva, a wildlife specialist for the government. The tarantulas are on the country’s list of endangered species, he added.

“All were extracted illegally and are part of the illegal wildlife trafficking that moves millions of dollars in the world,” Mr. Silva said in a news release from the forest and wildlife service.

The Peruvian authorities arrested the man, a 28-year-old citizen of South Korea who was traveling back to his country last Friday, with a planned stopover in France, they said. The National Forest and Wildlife Service said it had opened an investigation but did not specify any charges and did not release the name of the man they had detained.