CAIRO: A sudden influx of hundreds of baby crocodiles seized while being smuggled out of Cairo airport has left a zoo in the Egyptian capital struggling to deal with the tiny but rapidly growing reptiles. We ve never seen anything like this before, says Ragy Toma, who heads the government department in charge of dealing with seized contraband animals and was standing in front of the 265 infant crocs now housed at Giza zoo in Cairo. They were brought here after customs officials on Sunday found them, along with snakes and chameleons, in the luggage of a young Saudi man who said they were destined for a Saudi scientific institute. The man was released, and the results of what the airport vet called the largest smuggling attempt of Nile crocodiles in the whole of aviation history were brought to stay in this large basin in a glass-fronted cage. I d say these crocodiles were going to be sold to [Gulf] princes so they could wallow in pools at luxury villas, said Toma, who believes they were either caught by fishermen in southern Egypt or born on a secret farm. Zoo visitors squash their faces up to see the scaly haul while zoo director Nabil Sidki worries about how he will ever feed them or get rid of them. They re only a week old and they re already 30 cm long, but when they re adult they ll be four meters long, he says. And they can live for 100 years. He says that he will probably select 10 specimens to be distributed to the country s seven zoos and the rest will likely end up in the Nile - hundreds of kilometers to the south of Cairo and safely behind the Aswan high dam. Police in the chic southern Cairo suburb of Maadi have meanwhile been put on alert after witnesses claim to have seen a crocodile in the Nile waters. The government ordered the beast be hunted down, I took part but found no trace of it, not even a claw print, says Toma. Nile crocodiles are not endangered, but their trade is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and their live export is also illegal. The lucrative trade in Nile crocodiles has grown rapidly in recent years. In 2001, a Jordanian man was arrested at Cairo airport with 60 baby crocodiles in a suitcase. In March of this year, a veiled woman was detained at the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip with two crocodiles firmly strapped to her body. She confessed to working to order. Agence France-Presse
