Egypt’s scorpion king hunts fortune in the desert
An Egyptian man gave up his archeology job to gather scorpions and snakes and extract their venom for medicinal purposes.
“Almost everyone mocked me. No one seems to understand what I am doing,” Mohammad Boshta, 25, told Al-Monitor in his laboratory while carefully extracting venom from a scorpion.
“I gave up my job in the archeology field when I started hunting scorpions in the deserts and beaches of Egypt. I had faith in what I was doing. I found my passion.”
Boshta quit his archeologist job to explore selling snake and scorpion venom, which can be sold for thousands of dollars for therapeutic uses. He is now the owner of the Cairo Venom Company and keeps around 80,000 scorpions and a number of snakes in several farms across Egypt.
His journey began in 2015, when he read about the benefits of scorpion venom. He did extensive research and conducted endless experiments with hunters and specialists in the field, before starting to experiment by himself.
