Italian police in Bari uncovered a secret basement reptile house filled with dangerous exotic animals during a raid on a residential building.
Behind a false wall, officers found two green anacondas-each five meters long and weighing 60 kilograms-a 1.5-meter spectacled caiman, an Asian water monitor, a yellow anaconda, a Bolivian anaconda, four Burmese pythons, and four boa constrictors.
According to authorities, the spectacled caiman is a “wild predator with extremely powerful jaws” and the water monitor poses a “potentially dangerous bite.”
The animals were linked to a fugitive man with multiple criminal convictions. Police warned that such reptiles are increasingly being used by local criminals as tools of intimidation and symbols of power.