A Philadelphia insectarium has had $40,000 worth of insects stolen in what experts believe to be an inside job.
Among the seven thousand bugs lifted is one of the world’s most venomous spiders – the deadly six-eyed sand spider. Alongside this extremely creepy crawly, the missing bugs include giant African mantises, scorpions, bumblebee millipedes, warty glowspot roaches, tarantulas, dwarf and tiger hissers, leopard geckos, and several cockroach colonies.
Staff discovered that 80 percent of their insects were missing on August 22nd, alongside two staff uniforms stuck to the wall with steak knives.
The police have recovered one item: a Mexican fire-legged tarantula. It’s hard to tell exactly what was missing, as the thieves also stole the logs documenting each bug. All we know is that literally thousands of exotic spiders and cockroaches are currently free-crawling around Philadelphia.
The crime isn’t just theft. Because the insects were all taken at a port of entry, possessing them counts as tampering with evidence.
Three current and former staff members are currently suspects, but there have been no arrests. The insectarium’s chief executive John Cambridge stated that although the thieves face a heavy sentence, he hopes they get off lightly. “They are young…Everybody does dumb stuff when they’re young.”
