Canada has become the top exporter of Mexican tarantulas, Mexican officials say.
There is a growing market for the creatures, which have become popular pets.
Mexican biodiversity official Hesiquio Benítez said he had been shocked to find Canada had overtaken Mexico, where the spiders originally come from. Mr Benítez said Canadian breeders were exporting 14 species, while Mexicans only traded in five or six.
He said that until a few years ago, Canada would buy its tarantulas from Mexico and then sell them on, but that growing demand had led Canadians to start breeding their own. «Canada doesn’t have any native species [of tarantulas] but they’ve got their act together,» Mr Benítez told news agency Efe at an international tarantula workshop in the Mexican city of Guadalajara.
In Mexico on the other hand, 14 out of the 24 species of the red-knee tarantula (Brachypelma smithi) can be found in the wild, according to Mexico’s Biodiversity Commission, Conabio.
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