The escapee travels with 22 snakes in a suitcase to India (Photo: YouTube)
The customs and security personnel of the Chennai airport in southern India will certainly not forget this day, when they found 22 live snakes in the luggage of one of the passengers.
Smuggling of protected animals in and out of the country is common and a violation of India's Wildlife Protection Act, but such numbers have yet to be seen at the airport.
The passenger was stopped for a routine check last week, after getting off an Air Asia flight that took off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
After a brief questioning at the airport, the customs officers opened her suitcase and found the live snakes - of different species - while they were stored in transparent plastic containers.
A chameleon was also buried next to the snakes.
In a video posted on social media, one of the airport workers can be seen carefully handling one of the snakes.
It should be noted that in India the animal smuggling industry is thriving, and there is considerable demand for animals of various species, including exotic species.
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This may seem like a rare case, but this is certainly not the first time that live snakes have been discovered inside the bags of passengers trying to carry them through airports around the world.
For example, last December a passenger was caught trying to smuggle a snake in her bag while passing through the Tampa airport in Florida.
Mirroring a bag revealed the amazing fact that it had embedded in it a snake of a common multi-choked species ("bolt snake") that was 1.2 meters long.
In another incident, which happened last year on an Air India flight from India to Dubai, a snake was discovered that managed to slip out of one of the bags and went "for a spin" in the trunk of the plane.
And if all this is not enough, then last month there was a case that contained real danger: a South African pilot who was flying a light passenger plane designed for four passengers, had to make an emergency landing after he discovered a poisonous snake right under his seat.
In this case, the snake was discovered even before the flight on the wing of the plane, when the airport personnel tried to capture it, it escaped and hid inside the cover of one of the plane's engines.
After a thorough examination, he was not found, and the assumption was that he escaped during the commotion.
And this assumption, as the pilot found out later in the air, was completely wrong.
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