This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Five baby orangutans abandoned in an Indian forest have exposed a "massive" exotic wildlife trade, with traffickers smuggling increasingly rare species into the country, experts say. They warn of a growing multimillion-dollar trade in endangered animals, including apes smuggled through war-torn Myanmar to feed demand among wealthy Indians seeking exotic status symbols to flaunt on social media.
"There have been several instances of exotic wild animals being found or seized across the country," said Sumanth Bindumadhav of Humane World for Animals India. "The scale is massive." Critically endangered orangutans are native only to the Indonesian island of Sumatra and Borneo, which it shares with Malaysia and Brunei. Yet the five tiny orangutans were found by rangers in Balasore, in India's eastern Odisha state.
About 1½ years old, they are being cared for at a zoo. Indonesia has requested their return. Bindumadhav's group, in a June 2026 report, detailed what it called a "rising trade in exotic wildlife," demonstrated by a "steep increase in seizures" that reflected a "surge in illegal trade." The report estimated India's exotic-pet market at $42.6 million in 2024.
Orangutans and gibbons—small apes—were being "increasingly trafficked into India" from Southeast Asia's rainforests, it added. A senior official at India's Wildlife Crime Control Bureau said "thousands of social media influencers" were promoting exotic species as pets online, fueling demand among followers. "It is a huge market," said the official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
"Rich people keep them in their homes." Under a government voluntary disclosure scheme, more than 40,000 people had registered exotic animals by February 2021, government data shows. The figure is likely only a fraction of those in private hands, analysts say. "This is a figure from only those who registered themselves, so the true volume of it is potentially much larger and remains unknown," said Bindumadhav.
"The true scale of it is actually quite frightening." Former India head of the global anti-wildlife-trade group TRAFFIC Shekhar Kumar Niraj said the surge in trafficking was also linked to a "rising number" of animals held in private hands. "Private zoos have violated laws at a very alarming scale across the country," said Niraj. "Primates are very popular in zoos because they are very intelligent, like to interact with humans, the kind of thing zoos want." Indian federal authorities did not respond to AFP's requests for comment.
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