10 Bizarre Animal Smuggling Stories

In June 2005, an Australian woman landed at Melbourne Airport after a vacation in Singapore and was stopped by customs officials. The skirt she was wearing bulged oddly, and they could hear what was described as “‘flipping’ noises” coming from it. 

You have to wonder, as they pulled her aside for a search, what they were imagining they were about to uncover. It turns out that under her skirt, she wore an apron with pockets, into which she had slipped 15 bags containing 51 fish that she was illegally smuggling into the country, including an endangered Asian arowana, valued at a total of $30,000. 

She hadn’t flown all the way from Singapore with the animals in her skirt, though. According to The Age, the woman had packed the fish in her suitcase and went to the bathroom after she landed so she could transfer them to the apron, which she had created especially for hiding them.

The woman faced a fine of 110,000 Australian dollars and as much as 10 years in jail. She pled guilty and was sentenced to nine months of community service, but unfortunately, the fish had to be destroyed—they just posed too much risk to native wildlife. 

Animal smuggling is no joke: It ignores the welfare of the animals being smuggled, brings some species closer to extinction, and increases the risk of harming native environments through disease. And there’s a lot of it: In July 2024, a man was caught trying to smuggle snakes out of Hong Kong into Shenzhen, China, by concealing the reptiles in his pants. An Australian man tried to sneak live pigeons into that country by strapping one to each of his legs in 2009. But that’s nothing compared to the Dutch traveler who was arrested in French Guiana with live hummingbirds in his crotch. It seems pants are a common place for smugglers to conceal animals.

In the latest episode of The List Show, host and Mental Floss editor-in-chief Erin McCarthy shares some absolutely wild stories of people smuggling animals.

Watch the full episode above, and don’t forget to subscribe to Mental Floss on YouTube for new videos every week.

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