A 72-year-old Frenchman has no fear of reptiles. When he watches TV in his bungalow in western France, an alligator dozes off beside him.
The two-meter long reptile that Philippe Gillet calls Gator also hangs around under a coffee table and growls at his visitors.
Gillet not only has one but two pet alligators.
“When there is a storm he comes to sleep in my bed,” Gillet told Agence France-Presse. “People think I am mad.”
It’s not only alligators that don’t scare Gillet. With help from volunteers, he takes care of some 400 venomous species, including a Gabonese viper, a spitting cobra, a python, alligator turtles that can bite off a finger, tarantulas and scorpions, according to AFP.
Most of the animals were bought or given to him by people who could no longer care for them. France’s customs department has also sometimes turned to him.
The herpetologist feeds all the animals with money he earns from posting educational videos of the animals on TikTok, where he has 700,000 followers, and on his YouTube channel Inf’Faune, where he has 100,000 followers.
Meanwhile, a 28-year-old South Korean was too close for comfort to his own menagerie of frightening insects.
He placed 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes, and nine bullet ants inside ziplock bags and strapped them all to his abdomen, under his clothes, while at the Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, Peru on 8 November.
The man’s bulky stomach aroused the suspicion of airport security who stopped him before he could board his flight to South Korea.
The discovery of the tarantulas, centipedes and ants led to his arrest for wildlife trafficking.