There are only a few places a rhino's horn should appear, and inside a suitcase at the airport isn't one of them.
Unfortunately, that is what Thai authorities found when they searched a man's luggage in Bangkok's main international airport, according to Pattaya Mail.
The 36-year-old was from Vietnam and was traveling between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Laos.
A security scan raised suspicion during a layover in Bangkok, and six pieces of rhino horns weighing over 25 pounds were seized from his luggage. The stash was hidden in a thick wrapping of unidentified animal hides and stuffed inside a foam crate. The man was also transporting around 26 pounds of "unidentified meat," according to Indian English language news channel WION:
"There were some irregularities in the X-ray scan of the checked luggage so the authorities checked it," the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said in a statement, per an Agence France-Presse report.
People trying to bring rare plants or animals from one place in the world to another is more common than you might think.
There are niche markets for pets, medicines, and more that may be profitable but are harmful on both sides of the equation. Removing a species from its home causes that place to suffer from the loss of biodiversity. Meanwhile, the place it is brought to can be vulnerable to the incoming species outcompeting native ones.
When it comes to the rhino horns, the damage is a bit more cut and dry: Living animals were injured or killed to get those horns.
All five types of rhinos that still exist are protected species and are at varying degrees of extinction. That means trading their horns violates several serious international laws. The man who was caught in the act could be sent to prison for 10 years and fined up to $32,000.
Meanwhile, the seized materials were sent to a forensic laboratory. Thailand has become a major transit point in the contraband wildlife trade for international trafficking rings, but authorities will continue cracking down, Pattaya Mail reported.
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