The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Invertebrate Zoology The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Invertebrate Zoology
Showing posts with label Invertebrate Zoology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Invertebrate Zoology. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Man Caught Smuggling Nearly 5,000 Leeches In Luggage


A Niagara Falls, Ont., man has been fined $15,000 after he was caught flying into Canada with a suitcase full of leeches.

Ippolit Bodounov tried to smuggle 4,788 live, medicinal leeches in his carry-on luggage on Oct. 17, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). He'd just flown from Russia to Toronto's Pearson International Airport.

Bodounov carried the leeches in a large reusable grocery bag, said Gerry Brunet, operations manager of ECCC's wildlife enforcement directorate, based in Burlington, Ont. Within that bag were 10 smaller, dampened cloth bags.

A dog working with border agents smelled the leeches, Brunet said. 

"This is our first large-scale illegal leech import," he said, though the ministry sees a lot of illegally imported reptiles, turtles, tortoises and snakes. 

The ministry sent the leeches to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where Sebastian Kvist, curator of invertebrate zoology, identified them as Hirudo verbana, a threatened medicinal leech.

To read more on this story, click here: Man Caught Smuggling Nearly 5,000 Leeches In Luggage


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