Smuggle Bunny

He ingeniously and brazenly smuggles live endangered animals inside stuffed toys, specializing in baby animals for the illegal pet trade. His toy of choice is the bunny. Tragically, many of these animals die in transit from suffocation.

On his trips to Asia, he smuggles ivory for carved statues, and dried shark fins for “shark fin soup” served at fancy celebrations. This trade is devastating elephant and shark populations worldwide.

The method of obtaining shark fins, called shark finning, is especially cruel: fishermen slice off a shark’s fins and throw the live shark back into the ocean, where it cannot swim, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and slowly bleeds to death. Many species of shark are targeted, and millions die each year – including the beautiful, white polka dotted whale shark – the world’s largest fish.

Bunny also smuggles rhino horn, which some people believe gives them energy – even though rhino horn is simply made of keratin, the same substance human fingernails are made of! Due to this silly trade, rhinos are nearly extinct.

Pangolins, the most trafficked mammal in the world, are hunted both for their meat – and for their hard outer scales that are used in Asian medicine. Yet just like rhino horn, these scales are simply made of keratin, and have no medical value.

Sadly, his smuggling of ground-up tiger bones to Asia – which some believe “gives people the energy of tigers” – is driving these big cats to extinction. Because these bones are mainly calcium, they have no special medicinal value.

Hopefully, new generations will learn not to believe in superstitious cures . . . in time to save animals.