Endangered butterflies are being sold for high prices on eBay

Tens of hundreds of butterflies are offered on eBay every year and endangered species lined by commerce restrictions command among the highest costs, an evaluation has discovered.

Zhengyang Wang at Harvard University and his colleagues monitored gross sales of useless butterflies on eBay for one yr beginning in September 2020 by automating the search of 150,000 butterfly names – each current and historic – on the location.

The staff recorded greater than 50,000 transactions involving 3767 species, near a fifth of all recognized butterfly …