Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion
© Brianna Spause/The Philadelphia Inquirer, Associated PressThe Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion last year. Three current or former employees are suspected of stealing thousands of insects and lizards, the police said.
The desert hairy scorpions and domino cockroaches had vanished. The shelves at the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion were empty, and there was little movement in the glass cases. Electric-blue staff uniforms hung from knives that had been stabbed into a wall.

Thieves had stolen more than $40,000 worth of insects and lizards, and the police suspected an inside job.

Security cameras around the pavilion recorded several people creeping out of the museum last week with plastic containers holding giant African mantises, bumblebee millipedes, warty glowspot roaches, tarantulas, dwarf and tiger hissers, and leopard geckos.

John Cambridge, the chief executive of the insectarium, said he believed that "someone recognized an opportunity to remove some creatures" and did it.

An estimated 7,000 animals, or about 80 to 90 percent of the population of the insectarium, were stolen on Aug. 22 and possibly other days, Dr. Cambridge said. Three current or former employees of the insectarium are the suspects, the Philadelphia Police Department said in a statement. Officer Tanya Little, a department spokeswoman, said there had been no arrests yet.

The police have contacted the suspects and are searching their homes in hopes of finding surviving insects. It is difficult to know which creatures were stolen because the thieves also stole the logs used by the pavilion to keep track of the insects.

"They are extremely easy to hide," Dr. Cambridge said in an interview on Thursday. "We want to make sure that these creatures are treated with respect."

"I really don't think the perpetrators realize the severity of what they were doing," he added. "We believe these were taken for the purpose of resale."

Insect theft
© John Cambridge, CEO of the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly PavilionThe perpetrators left staff uniforms pinned to a wall. A Mexican fireleg tarantula that was stolen was later recovered.
The police have returned a handful of insects and a Mexican fireleg tarantula to the insectarium. But a six-eyed sand spider, one of the most venomous of its kind in the world, is still missing.

"We are happy that we still have the ones that we do," Dr. Cambridge said. "We continue to use those ones for educational purposes."

The insectarium opened its doors to the public in February 2017. Because of the theft, it has closed the second and third floors of the pavilion until November. The organization has started a GoFundMe campaign to help with renovations and to try to replace some of the missing insects.

Dr. Cambridge said the thieves did not realize that what they were stealing could have been considered federal evidence because of the origin of some animals.

"We are holding species that may have been confiscated at a port of entry," Dr. Cambridge said. "Taking those critters is literally tampering with evidence."

The thieves could face significant time behind bars for stealing the creatures and tampering with evidence, but Dr. Cambridge said he would prefer that they not be reprimanded so harshly.

"They are young, and I really hope that this isn't something that follows them for the rest of their life," Dr. Cambridge said. "Everybody does dumb stuff when they're young."

The insectarium is aiming to have a replenished stock of creatures to participate in the Philadelphia Oddities Expo, on Nov. 3. For now the organization is trying to identify what was taken.

"We are going to be able to use this as a learning opportunity to build an even better insectarium," Dr. Cambridge said. "We just want our critters back."