Months ago, Omani police at Muscat International Airport thwarted an attempt to smuggle the "Omani lizard" animal. Years before that, specifically in 2012, a traveler arriving from Oman was caught at Munich Airport in Germany with dozens of these animals in his possession.
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This animal lives in the coastal and desert environments of Oman, within a limited geographical range. It is an endemic species, meaning that its natural presence is linked to Oman, and it is not widely distributed in other parts of the world.
This lizard digs burrows in the soil and spends a significant part of its life inside them, using its surrounding environment to search for food, protection, and to regulate its body temperature.
Scientists still lack sufficient information about the distribution and status of this animal in nature. A study by German herpetologist Thomas Wilms, published in 2002, estimated that the number of specimens known to science before the study began in 1998 was only 30.
Dr. Omar Al-Sheikhly, a professor at the College of Science at the University of Baghdad, told Al Jazeera Net that the success of breeding in captivity can create a cover for smuggling wild animals by claiming that they were born in captivity, and this problem has been documented by international studies and reports in the field of international wildlife trade.
that some illegally smuggled wild animals may have entered breeding stocks at some point and then later appeared in the trade as captive-born, a practice known in the wildlife trade as "source washing".
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