Thailand’s main international airport has become a reluctant hub in a sprawling illegal trade funneling wild animals to India, where social media “petfluencers” and exotic cafes are fueling a boom in demand for rare creatures, the South China Morning Post reported Sunday.

A string of recent seizures at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport has laid bare the scale and brazenness of the smuggling pipeline. On Wednesday, a 19-year-old passenger bound for Taipei was caught trying to slip past security with dozens of fist-sized Indian star tortoises taped to her body. Of the 30 reptiles wrapped in masking tape, stuffed in cloth bags and strapped beneath a baggy black T-shirt, 29 were still alive when officers searched her, the SCMP said.

A day earlier, hundreds of live turtles, bright blue-green iguanas, and a freshwater crocodile were seized on arrival in Bangkok from the Indian city of Bengaluru, the report said. Other recent cases cited by the SCMP included raccoons packed in a check-in box by an Indian woman on April 18, one of which had already died in the nearly airless container, as well as chameleons and a pair of endangered gibbons destined for India.

Polawee Buchakiet, director of Thailand’s Wildlife Crime Intelligence Centre, told the SCMP that the trade is far more sophisticated than opportunistic smuggling. 

“In India, influencers and exotic cafes are driving demand,” he told the news outlet. “But this is bigger than just low-level smuggling of the animals, it is organized crime. Whenever a smuggler is arrested an Indian national or a Thai comes to bail them out, sometimes for up to 1 million baht (US$30,500). It shows how much money is behind everything.”

According to the report, India and Taiwan are leading sources of demand for exotic pets, while Thailand serves simultaneously as a breeding center, brokerage, and smuggler’s route. Polawee told the outlet that some buyers also exploit places like Bangkok’s Chatuchak market, where certain animals can be sold legally within Thailand, before attempting to smuggle them out on flights.

Kanitha Krishnasamy, director for Southeast Asia at the wildlife crime watchdog TRAFFIC, told the SCMP the volumes involved leave little doubt about the nature of the trade. 

“Without a doubt this is organized criminality,” she said in the report. “We’re not talking about one or two animals, we’re talking about hundreds sometimes, especially reptiles and birds.” Krishnasamy added that India’s exotic pet boom appears “linked to new wealth, similar to what we saw developing in China and other parts of the world 15 years ago.”

The news agency reported that smugglers caught in Thailand over the past year have been carrying giant tortoises endemic to the Seychelles and Africa’s Sahel, critically endangered gibbons from forests in Vietnam and Laos, and vipers so rare they were only identified by scientists in Iran and Iraq two decades ago.

Officials also warned of public health risks. “What’s truly frightening is that wild animals like these, if uncontrolled, become disease reservoirs,” Polawee told the SCMP. “The Covid-19 pandemic is the prime example. It  became one of the biggest pandemic crises the world has ever seen.”