Italy police warn reptiles being used by crooks as weapons after snakes found behind false wall

Anacondas, boa constrictors and a caiman were found behind a false wall in southern Italy, police said Thursday, amid warnings dangerous reptiles are being used by local crooks to intimidate their victims. Police in Bari carrying out a raid in an apartment block found “exotic and dangerous animals” in a secret basement room which had been transformed into a clandestine reptile house. The find included two green anacondas, each about five metres (16 feet) long and weighing around 60 kg and a spectacled caiman measuring over 1. 5 meters long. “The spectacled caiman. .. is a wild predator with extremely powerful jaws and potentially aggressive behavior” and posed “a real threat to public safety”, according to a police statement. There was also an Asian water monitor, a lizard “of considerable size equipped with claws and a potentially dangerous bite”, it said. Police also seized a yellow anaconda, a Bolivian anaconda, four Burmese pythons, approximately three meters long each, and four boa constrictors. The reptiles were kept by “a man with multiple criminal convictions, who is currently untraceable, ” the statement said. The “possession of exotic and particularly dangerous animals in criminal contexts is a phenomenon of significant social concern”, it said. “In several cases, these animals are used as tools of intimidation or as a display of criminal power in the area, ” it added.

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