1y ago

US museum curator temporarily detained in Turkey airport with 1,500 scorpions and spiders in luggage

www.usatoday.com

16 comments

Poor guy had a permit and still had to spend the night in jail.
"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish Prison..."
- Sounds better than being near 1500 scorpions and spiders.
According to the police, one liter of medicine from scorpion venom could be worth $10 million, which is why it was prohibited to take these animal species out of the country.
If that seems like a dramatic exaggeration of the value or quantity of venom you could get from scorpions. A quick google search shows you can get 2 mg of venom per scorpion, and it is indeed one of the most valuable liquids on earth. Assuming it's roughly 1 mg per ml, 500 scorpions could make a liter, but professional scorpion farmers only manage to milk about 50 per day.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkish-scorpion-farmer-milks-arachnids-their-expensive-venom-2022-08-16/
It kind of makes me wonder how quickly scorpions reproduce, and how many I can hide from my wife...
- Be careful it starts with just one scorpion and suddenly you are involved in a show about a deranged exotic animal fan that supports trump with an arch nemesis that fed their husband to a tiger.
  
  GOD DAMN CAROL BASKINNNS
  but for real she like, probably didn't kill her husband.
- I wonder if it 1L of pure venom worth $10M or 1L of medicine made from the pure venom. The processing might add to the cost per liter.
  
  The cops aaid medicine made from the venom, but other sources said that the venom itself is valued at $10MM per liter. So I don't know what to believe.
  Either way, you need a shit ton of scorpions to get enough, and you need to spend days milking them.
- Well, they have 3 -100 young and depending on the sub type. And I couldn't find out how often they can breed but the low end is like 6 months.
I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING- never mind, you're good to go, sir.
This gives off big "The Mummy" vibes. We sure this isn't a mummy wearing a museum curator skin suit?
Who among us, amirite?

16 comments