Malaysian officials have reported the biggest ever seizure of rhino horns after foiling an illegal smuggling attempt.

Cardboard boxes containing the horns – along with other bones believed to be from tigers and leopards – were apprehended at Kuala Lumpur airport before they could reach Vietnam.

Malaysia’s Wildlife Department says it will commence DNA testing on everything it has recovered to identify which species the body parts came from.

It’s believed that the entire shipment was worth an estimated $12 million on the international black market.


The box containing the rhino bones alone weighed 116kg.

‘This was a very unusual mix of wildlife parts found – rhino horns which were clearly not from Asia and carnivore carcasses which could have originated from the country,’ said Kanitha Krishnasamy, the Southeast Asia director of TRAFFIC, a group that monitors the illegal wildlife trade.



‘This discovery raises questions about how criminals are accumulating wildlife parts and using a multitude of routes and methods to traffic them onwards to destination countries,’ he said in a statement.

Neither the source of the horns and the carcasses, nor the length of time they have been in storage, is known.

Sadly, Vietnam is a popular market for rhino horn, where it is believed to have medicinal properties – meaning it is in high demand from the emerging middle class there.

A single kilo of rhino horn is can be valued at tens of thousands of dollars.

Earlier this year, Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino died after age-related complications meant his muscles and bones had degenerated and his skin had extensive wounds.