Baby Orangutans Rescued From A Man Selling Them Online For $28,000

You can buy and sell just about anything online, and unfortunately, that includes wild and endangered animals that have been ripped from their homes in the wild.

Recently, two baby orangutans were ripped from their homes and put up for sale online illegally for almost $28,000 by a wildlife trafficker who was ready to give the two babies away to the highest bidder no matter how they planned to treat the endangered animals.

Thankfully, however, the Thai police got a tip about an ad on a social media site for the baby orangutans and posed as a buyer. When the trafficker showed up to sell the animals, the police immediately arrested him and saved the poor babies, who were being kept in a plastic box, and are now getting them the care they need.

“These types of arrests are very, very important because this is not a single case,” said Matthew Pritchett, Director of communications for Freeland Foundation.”It’s something that is linked to much larger, broader, regional organized criminal syndicates that are smuggling these endangered species for profit.”

“It is really saddening to see cases like this, when you see two very young orangutans, probably only a few months old, that have been taken away from their mother, to be somebody’s pet,” Pritchett said. “That is all that this is for, is because somebody is greedy enough to think that these types of animals will make a big pet. That means that people try to trade them for profit.