Nearly 400 Rare Baby Crocodiles Saved From Becoming Purses
In this week’s crime blotter: endangered Siamese crocs saved, 525 bear paws seized, and a tourist attack on a flamingo.
Chinese police seized 399 baby Siamese crocodiles from a house in southern China, according to the state-owned Xinhua News Agency.
Police in Dongxing were collecting registration information from residents when they noticed three “nervous-looking men” moving goods outside a rental house. Police approached them for questioning, but two escaped in a truck. The third was caught.
Siamese crocodiles are one of the most critically endangered species of crocodilians on the planet. In 1992, they were virtually extinct in the wild, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, though later a few surviving but fragmented populations were discovered. The freshwater crocodiles are native to Southeast Asia but most likely remain only in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.
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