7000 Insects Stolen from Philadelphia Insectarium

7000 insects were stolen from the ‘Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion’ museum in Philadelphia, USA on August 22. The insectarium is opened in 1992 and expanded in 2017. It has two floors of exhibits including diverse collection of insects and tropical plants. It also has 2000 butterflies. The thieves have stolen around 80 to 90 percent of the collection from the museum. It includes insects, lizards, cockroaches, tarantulas, millipedes and more. It is really a creepy and weird theft in the history. It is also a sad news for both the museum and the public.

(Butterflies. Picture Courtesy: Gellinger, Pixabay)

According to CEO of the museum and the police, the theft might have carried out by the museum employees. The security cameras in the museum have captured five people stealing the insects in the plastic boxes. The police department is investigating the suspects. Interestingly, the thieves have also took the inventory records of the insects with them. The insects and other creatures are easy to smuggle and hide. According to Gizmodo, the stolen insects are worth of $50,000. So, the CEO and the police are expecting that the thieves may sell the insects. The New York Times have reported that the police have confiscated few insects. However, a venomous six-eyed sand spider is not yet confiscated. This type of spiders usually lives in deserts and have hemolytic and necrotoxic effects. 

Oddly, the thieves left two museum uniforms hanging on the wall from the knives stuck into the wall. It will be difficult to find all the stolen small creatures, unless they catch all the thieves. This theft makes me remember the biggest art theft happened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. $500 million worth of eight paintings, three drawings and two artifacts were stolen during that heist. No one was arrested and no art works are recovered so far. I hope the police will arrest the insect thieves soon, since there were caught on the security cameras.