ANIMAL & WILDLIFE NEWS, ENVIRONMENT, WEIRD

Endangered insects and spiders being sold illegally on eBay and Amazon, study shows

AUGUST 15, 2022

by Matt Higgins

ITHACA, N.Y. — You can find anything on eBay and Amazon — including rare and endangered insects that are illegal to sell. A new study from Cornell University researchers finds that exotic or threatened insects and spiders can be easily purchased online since there’s no adequate oversight.

Researchers found a number of these creepy crawlers, including tarantulas, being sold illegally online. John Losey, the study’s lead author and a professor of entomology at Cornell, says the study started as a project for his Insect Conservation Biology course. The study includes 18 student co-authors who were undergraduates in 2019 when the research was done.