One sweltering afternoon in May, Aishwarya Sridhar stood sweating by the side of an isolated road in Bangkok, waiting for a tortoise smuggler to arrive.

A man dressed in a gray t-shirt, black shorts, and a face mask soon approached and introduced himself as “Mr. X.” He didn’t want to use his real name, he said. But he was ready to make a deal. He and his Indian supplier could provide Sridhar with 600 wild-caught Indian star tortoises almost immediately, and more in the future.

Demand for these forest-dwelling animals—known for the striking yellow stars marking their shells—extends across Asia and beyond, even though it has been illegal to sell them internationally since 2019. The tortoises are also officially protected everywhere they’re found in nature—India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.

Yet the exotic pet trade in these animals has continued and perhaps even grown in recent years, according to Sridhar. To avoid being caught, Mr. X explained, it’d be best for the animals to be driven through Myanmar.

Sridhar, a National Geographic Explorer from southern India, eventually demurred on the sale, saying she’d have to verify some things on her end. But in truth she’d only posed as a buyer to help inform her ongoing documentary and photo work examining the trade of this at-risk species.

Indian star tortoises are valued for their beauty, she says, but also because many people believe the animals may bring them good luck and blessings, stemming from the tortoise’s association with the Hindu god Vishnu. Posing as a buyer, Sridhar says, has helped her understand prices, transit points, and supply numbers, among other details of the trade.

“My team and I have conducted undercover operations in both Indian and Bangkok pet markets to see Indian star tortoises being sold for quite a high price,” she says. There’s increasing interest in the species, and animals with more yellow in their shells fetch higher prices, she says.

Why are so many people buying these tortoises? “It could be due to availability, but also spirituality and religious myths associated with the Indian star,” Sridhar says.

A primary target

According to Hindu texts, Vishnu once took the form of a tortoise called Kurma, and Kurma played a crucial role in helping the gods and demons obtain the nectar of immortality. That has helped fuel the idea that turtles and tortoises bring good luck and prosperity, says Neil D’Cruze, who has studied the Indian star trade as the global head of wildlife research at World Animal Protection, an international animal welfare nonprofit. 

Though trade in Indian star tortoises has been used as cover for even more endangered animals, the reptiles themselves are now the primary target for many buyers, Sridhar says.

Pinning down the exact number of sales is difficult, but it’s clear that the pet demand is threatening the animal’s future, with thousands of the animals likely taken from the wild each year. In the last year alone, almost 4,000 of the animals were seized in Chennai airport, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, according to the Times of India.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature relisted the animal as “vulnerable” in 2018—only one step above endangered—with its collection for the exotic pet trade listed as a top threat. The number of these animals left in the wild is currently unknown.

Indian star tortoises are slow to mature and breed, so they cannot effectively replace their losses, says Chris Shepherd, executive director of Monitor, a nonprofit organization in British Columbia, Canada, dedicated to combating the illegal wildlife trade. “I think the trade is continually decimating the species, and there should be more work to monitor prices, routes, and quantities,” he says. “But at the end of the day, there are only two things that can be done really: Consumers have to stop buying these things, and enforcement agencies in key places along the trade route really need to do their job.” (Related: Shocking report details massive illegal turtle trade network.)

It’s possible to captive-breed this species, Shepherd says, and pet owners in the United States and Canada can more readily acquire captive-bred Indian star tortoises than wild ones. But in Asia, it’s still cheapest and easiest to obtain Indian stars taken from their natural habitats.

Details of a fatal trade

India remains the primary source of the species, according to D’Cruze. The Chennai airport is likely the main smuggling hub for the tortoises, he says, but Sri Lanka has also become a significant supplier and transit point for trafficking networks, facilitating the movement of these animals to East and Southeast Asia.

As a result, the tortoise’s numbers are dwindling at certain locales in their range. One 2015 study by D’Cruze and colleagues found that at least 55,000 of the species, mostly juveniles, had been collected from just one location in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh—over just one year.

Thailand is a top destination for the species, where the animal is a particularly popular pet. And in June 2023, customs officials in Tamil Nadu seized 369 Indian stars that were in transit to Bangkok.

“This species remains widely regarded as one of the most seized tortoise species in the world,” D’Cruze says. “It is important to note that, irrespective of whether it is 1,000 or 100 animals in a consignment, this trade inflicts significant cruelty upon the individual tortoises involved.” The animals are often wrapped in cloth or taped up and packed into suitcases for stressful, overcrowded journeys that can last days, he says. The tortoises also experience traumas during capture and transit that include shell fractures and puncture wounds.

Seized animals are rarely returned to the wild, and many die in transit, Shepherd says. To help the species, D’Cruze and Shepherd both say that transit and destination countries, including Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, should enact new laws to better protect the animals and prevent the exploitation of the legal loopholes which are undermining efforts to conserve this species.

A tortoise’s luck

D’Cruze says beliefs about good fortune associated with the tortoises are widespread and lead to the animals being cherished in family homes.

One woman he met in Ahmedabad, a city in western India, told him that she credited a tortoise that she owned with helping her son find employment, her daughter marrying well, and even her sick goat recovering after the tortoise entered their home. “Her account emphasized the depth of belief in the creature’s power to bring fortune and blessing to its owner,” he says.

“She was totally unaware that owning an Indian star tortoise is illegal.”

Despite beliefs about how the tortoise benefits the home, the animals rarely live a good life in captivity, D’Cruze says. “Most of these animals, unless kept in large backyards or farms where they can forage, often tend to have misshapen shells,” D’Cruze says. The deformities are usually a symptom of poor diet, lack of exercise, dehydration, or other stressful conditions.

“I saw the star as a kid in the wild,” says Sridhar. “But during COVID lockdown, I was browsing the internet, and I came across one video where an Indian star was in a person’s house, and then I saw a lot of videos of people keeping them as pets, and that got me wondering—why was this wild animal in people’s houses?” That question, she says, put her on the path to investigating the trade in these animals and the threats to their future.