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New investigation from @Bellingcat shows how influencers use services that provide monkeys, tigers, lions and cheetahs that they pose with in their Instagram posts that can be tracked to a shady network involved in the wildlife trade https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2021/02/08/how-instagram-celebrities-promote-dubais-underground-animal-trade/
Our researchers were able to track multiple animals that appeared in different influencers' videos and photographs by using the pattern on the animals' fur.
Helpfully, the users who shared the photographs and videos of the animals on Instagram tagged the same account, the mysterious mbe.777
Instagram posts by mbe.777 showed many wild animals inside the same rooms, many of which who later appeared in the social media posts influencers.
A woman, who appears to be friends with mbe.777 based on her posts, showed animals in the same apartment, but gave a crucial clue to where it was located, a blue sign on a building outside the apartments window.
The same television and a similar view of the sign is also visible in old apartment rental advertisements of the same location, confirming it as the Jumeirah Beach Residence in Dubai.
The same couch and TV appear in photos with animals posted by Indian celebrity Adnaan Shaik (13.4 million TikTok followers), German entrepreneur Saygin Yalcin (717k Instagram followers), and Indian “fashion influencer” Shadan Farooqui (4.2 million Instagram followers).
Beyond photoshoots, MBE.777 also appears to sell animals kept in the Dubai apartment. Another Instagram account, Exotic_Petsdubai, appears to help MBE.777 in these sales. This account is selling the animals in its posts worldwide, taking cash upon delivery to your home.
We can connect this account to MBE.777 because its posts feature pictures and videos of the same animals seen on MBE.777’s account, on the same furniture:
The Russian woman closely linked to MBE.777 shares pictures of the same animals, but offers more information. For example she shared pictures of a Cheetah cub on VKontakte, a species listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
There are an estimated 8,000 of them left in the wild, a number that is declining in part because of the pet trade. Like lions, they are a status symbol in the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia.
When one user asked if it was her cheetah, she replied “used to be mine, sold already”.
When one user asked if it was her cheetah, she replied “used to be mine, sold already”.
On Instagram, she shared a video of the same cub, adding that they would soon be joined by an adult cheetah.
This woman also shares images of these animals on Instagram. Another user asked her if a one and a half month old cub is now her pet. She replies that although the cub spent the entire night with them, it has now flown to a different country.
Another person close to MBE.777 who records the same animals, also shared a video of two lions. One is kept in a small cage, the other is chained and suffers from a luxated lens. This medical condition is not evidence of mistreatment per se, but would require medical attention.
On March 27 2020, MBE.777 posted a video showing a serval cub. The serval is an endangered wild cat also listed by the UAE’s 2017 law as a “dangerous animal” which individuals cannot trade nor keep as a pet. Despite this, one user in the comments asked how much it would cost.
Three days later, on March 30, the Instagram account “Dubai_Serval”, maintained by someone followed by MBE.777, began posting videos of a similar looking animal.
Is this the same Serval? Allowing for differences in the resolution, angle, and lighting, the spots match in size and relation to one another. The whisker spots are also a precise match.
Before it was even two months old, this Serval was apparently moved from MBE.777’s apartment to another person’s home, who has been keeping it there as a pet for the past ten months.
This is just one example; a similar case involves a Chinese woman who was followed by MBE.777, and afterwards began keeping a tiger and lion cub as pets in her home.
The tiger cub appears to be the same as that previously shared by the Russian woman close to MBE.777, who added the description “My sweetie, happy in a new family”.
A comparison of the stripes and whisker spots indicates that these photos indeed show the same animal.
The rest of the article explores our attempts to identify those involved with this trade, and what happened when we tried to reach out to them https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2021/02/08/how-instagram-celebrities-promote-dubais-underground-animal-trade/
