The Kaohsiung Harbor Police Department yesterday at the harbor seized 50 smuggled long-tailed chinchillas valued at NT$7.5 million (US$253,970).
The rodents, each worth NT$150,000 on the pet market, were seized after police officers Pan Shih-ying (潘詩盈) and Shen Ya-chin (沈雅欽) found them in a minivan at a harbor checkpoint, the department said.
The minivan’s driver, surnamed Yang (楊), appeared nervous and the officers heard animal noises coming from the back seat, prompting them to search the vehicle, the department said.
Photo copied by Hung Ting-hung, Taipei Times
The animals were likely smuggled from China, it said, adding that it was the largest number of illegally imported chinchillas the department has ever seized.
The department said it would hand over Yang, who has been detained, to prosecutors over contraventions of the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保護法) and the Act for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Disease (動物傳染病防治條例).
While chinchillas bred in captivity are not considered endangered animals in Taiwan, they must be checked for diseases by the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine before they can be legally imported, according to the Forestry Bureau.
Chinchillas are native to the Andes mountains in South America, and live in rock crevices and caves at high elevations, the Taipei City Animal Protection Office said.
The rodents need extensive care, as their food has to be carefully selected and the temperature of their environment needs to be controlled, the office said.
Chinchillas are adapted to living in temperatures of 16°C to 18°C and have thick fur covering their entire body, and could die of heatstroke or heat exhaustion at higher temperatures, it said.
They can jump as high as 1.8m, so owners shold provide them with plenty of space, the office added.
Chinchillas have gained popularity in Taiwan in the past few years due to their docile disposition and appearance, which people liken to Totoro, the titular character from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animation My Neighbor Totoro.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,