Venom isn’t just a feature of some animals; it’s found across the living world, from plants and fungi to bacteria and viruses, says a new study.

Lead author William Hayes, an ecologist at Loma Linda University, U.S., has long studied venomous rattlesnakes. It was while teaching a course on the biology of venom that he and his students began thinking about the various definitions of venom and examples of non-animals that satisfied those definitions.

“The deeper we dug into those examples, the more convinced we became that venom wasn’t invented solely by animals. It’s a remarkable adaptation that is far, far more widespread and ubiquitous than currently recognized,” Hayes told Mongabay.

All venomous animals have one thing in common, the authors write: They introduce toxins into another organism using structures like fangs or spines. However, different animals acquire, store, deliver and use venom in different ways.

Some like jellyfish and anemones make toxins inside specialized stinging cells. Scorpions and snakes produce venom inside special glands, delivering it through stingers or fangs. Others borrow toxins: boxer crabs (Lybia tessellate), for instance, carry venomous sea anemones on their claws like boxing gloves for defense, while the anemones likely get food in return. Some marine worms store bacteria-produced toxins in glands, which they inject into their prey or predators through a wound.

The non-animal world has analogous examples, the authors found. For instance, tiny, single-celled organisms called ciliates contain toxin-filled, harpoon-like structures that can inject toxins into larger, single-celled prey, causing paralysis or death, Hayes said.

Among plants, the parasitic mistletoe uses a specialized root structure to penetrate another plant’s tissues, before delivering venom-like toxins that allow it to extract nutrients from its host.

Like boxing crabs co-opting anemones, a group of plants called ant-plants host stinging ant colonies that defend the plants while receiving food and shelter in return. “Why expend energy synthesizing, storing, and producing structures to defend yourself with venom when you can just as readily use someone else’s investment instead?” Hayes said.

Ant-plants can even manipulate the size of their ant colonies in response to threats, like snakes or scorpions controlling how much venom they deliver during a bite or sting, a trait researchers call “venom-metering,” Hayes added.

Timothy Jackson, co-head of the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay by email that the paper “does the field a service” by cataloguing examples of toxin delivery across a wide range of non-animal organisms. “Some of us have been discussing non-animal (including microbial) ‘venoms’ for a number of years, so I welcome this survey.”

Jackson added that some toxin researchers “may resist the inclusion of plants, fungi, microbes, and viruses, within the function class of venomous organisms”. But “nature is exceptionally complex, and rather messy, and we must allow our definitions to evolve along with our understanding,” he said.

Banner image: acacia with stinging ants by Ryan Somma via Flickr (CCBY-SA2.0).

A wildlife rescue center in Rio de Janeiro is giving animals a second chance after they’ve been torn from the Atlantic Forest by poachers, a Mongabay short documentary showed.

At the Vida Livre (Free Life) Institute, the team of volunteer veterinarians and biologists rehabilitate thousands of wild animals — from parrots with broken beaks to newborn armadillos and drugged monkeys — helping them recover so they can be returned to their natural habitat.

In September 2024, two capuchin monkeys were brought in after staff at the Rio Botanical Garden noticed unusual behavior in the primates. Blood tests confirmed they’d been given sedatives, which poachers often sneak into treats like bananas to subdue their victims. In March 2025, another two arrived in the same condition.

“When they arrived, they were very uncoordinated,” Roshed Seba, the president of the Vida Livre Institute, told Mongabay in a video interview. “They were evaluated by the vet and had their blood taken.” They were also given food and water to help them recover.

The institute, which turns 10 this year, has treated more than 13,000 animals. Most are native to Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, including sloths, owls, anteaters, boas, toucans and even pumas.

One toucan lost half of its upper beak during an attempted capture by traffickers. After its rescue, the team used a 3D printer to make a prosthetic beak, allowing it to eat and resume its normal functions.

In another case, a sloth was drugged the same way as the monkeys. “Imagine drugging a sloth,” Seba said. “It almost died.”

Wildlife traffickers often use social media to sell animals as pets. Birds, especially male songbirds, are the most trafficked for their songs. Without them in the wild to reproduce, the wild population is weakened and the species’ reproductive capacity diminishes.

“Wildlife trade has more impacts than people imagine,” Juliana Machado Ferreira, the executive director of Freeland Brasil, a nonprofit fighting wildlife trafficking, told Mongabay. “Apart from the individual animal who suffers greatly, we also lose pollinators, seed dispersers, animals that have an ecological role in nature.”

Illegal wildlife trade ranks as the world’s fourth most lucrative international organized criminal enterprise, behind drugs, weapons and human trafficking. “Wildlife trafficking can only exist in conjunction with other crimes such as fraud, forgery, smuggling, criminal association, among others,” Ferreira said.

The Vida Livre institute says it hopes to educate the public about the harm caused by buying birds or monkeys as pets. And for the wildlife rehabilitated at the center, the goal is always to release animals back into the wild to live in freedom in their natural habitat. “I would love for the institute to be empty,” Seba said, “and to be only dedicated to talking about the beauty of Brazil’s fauna to inspire people.”

Banner image: A young orange-spined hairy dwarf porcupine (Sphiggurus villosus) rescued by the Vida Livre institute. Image by Rafael Bacelar for Mongabay.

A Mongabay investigation has uncovered exclusive details about the clandestine market for gorilla and chimpanzee body parts in northeastern Nigeria, revealing that the trade works in a larger area than previously believed and kills more critically endangered gorillas than previously acknowledged.

Speaking to hunters, traffickers and customers of a trade steeped in both taboo and tradition, Mongabay contributor Orji Sunday found that prices for ape parts have recently skyrocketed, pushing some of the rarest great apes closer to extinction.

The illegal trade targets some of the region’s most threatened species, most crucially the critically endangered Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), found only in a few isolated forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border. The IUCN estimates three are killed each year, a devastating rate for a species with fewer than 300 individuals left in the wild.

However, hunters told Mongabay they regularly find and kill gorillas in Taraba state, an area not officially known to host gorillas, suggesting either an undocumented local population, or that western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) are making their way to Taraba. Either way, as traffickers consolidate operations and law enforcement in the region is compromised, the threats are mounting.

Hunters themselves can also pay a huge social price in exchange for the financial benefit of killing gorillas.

Benjamin Dauda, a former hunter from Taraba state, said desperation led him to kill a gorilla in 1997, after his father died and he risked dropping out of school if his tuition wasn’t paid.

“I had to kill it [the gorilla] because of money. It is a terrible thing to do,” said Dauda from the Sunkuru community. “When I came close to the dead body, it was exactly like a human being. The only difference is that we humans dress in clothes but gorillas wear fur. I was scared to touch it. I was shivering.”

After the hunt, Dauda faced social ostracization, with relatives refusing to share meals with him for a time. For locals, a hunter who kills a gorilla may face death, debilitating illnesses or attract grave misfortunes and tragedies, but those who survive are celebrated for their bravery. Dauda eventually became chief of the Ndola-speaking people of Ngada and gave up hunting.

Today, hunting is a booming business.

“If you visit Ose main markets, you can get up to 50 to 100 ape heads if you so desire. Their supply of ape body parts is quite large,” Ekene Ezenwoke, an ape body part trader who operates from one of the major markets in southeast Nigeria, told Mongabay.

Some traditional healers are now shifting to using body parts from domesticated animals like cows and goats, but with skyrocketing prices, the illegal trade continues to drive threatened gorillas toward extinction.

Banner image: The Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli) is considered one of the most threatened primate species on the planet. Image by Julie Langford via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

At least 30 people were killed and more than 48,000 hectares, or 119,000 acres, of land was burned in fires that raged over the last week of March in South Korea, media reported.

According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, the fires started on March 21 and were accompanied by strong winds and dry weather. Local authorities issued wind advisories on March 21 and 22 warning people to refrain from burning trash and agricultural waste. But by then, large forest fires were already recorded.

The disaster is reportedly South Korea’s largest recorded wildfire as the blaze raged on for several days. Most of the fires were contained starting March 28, although new fires appeared days later.

The Associated Press reported that the fatalities included four firefighters and a pilot whose helicopter crashed while fighting the blazes. The others killed were civilians, mostly elderly people who were unable to evacuate. Another 45 people were injured, nine in serious condition.

The report said 6,000 structures were damaged or destroyed. Tens of thousands of people had to evacuate after their houses caught fire. More than 3,100 people fled to 114 temporary shelters, while the towns of Uiseong, Andong, Cheongsong, Yeongyang and Yeongdeok were declared special disaster zones, CNN reported.

To help fight the wildfire, South Korea deployed 10,000 firefighters, police and civil servants, as well as 7,500 ground troops and more than 420 helicopters, according to reports.

A truck driver told AFP that the wildfire “was like the apocalypse.” Residents and monks were devastated by the destruction of temples, especially Gounsa Temple in Uiseong, one of the largest in the town and built in 618 C.E., the BBC reported.

Police in North Gyeongsang province said they suspect one of the wildfires was caused by a man setting fire to clear grass around a family grave in Uiseong. Police say the other fires were likely also accidents caused by sparks from welding or burning trash.

South Korea is experiencing “unusually warm” spring temperatures that dried out vegetation and contributed to the fast-moving fires. Prime Minister and Acting President Han Duck-soo told CNN the wildfires caused “unprecedented damage.” He also said that since the start of the year, 244 wildfires have already been recorded in the country, a figure 2.4 times higher than during the same period last year.

Based on daily maximum temperatures, researchers from Climate Central confirmed that “Human-caused climate change has significantly amplified the likelihood of this heat, further intensifying fire risks in areas already grappling with severe drought.”

Banner image of South Korea wildfires by NASA (Public domain).

African gray parrots, one of the world’s most trafficked birds, can no longer be captured or traded across the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Tshopo province, a key transit route for traffickers, according to a recent decree passed by the provincial government.

Known for their intelligence and ability to mimic human speech, gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus) are highly sought after in the international pet trade. However, their widespread capture from the wild has led to severe population declines across their range in Africa, leading to them being listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2016.

Their “slow rate of reproduction, and tendency to aggregate in large flocks makes them highly vulnerable to overexploitation,” Rowan Martin, U.K.-based director of the Africa Conservation Programme at the NGO World Parrot Trust, told Mongabay by email.

Tshopo is the third DRC province, after Maniema and Sankuru, to ban the capture and sale of the parrots.

The Tshopo ban is significant because the province is central to the gray parrot trade, funneling parrots from other provinces “through its major national airport Bangoka and through its River ports — including from the provinces of Ituri, Maniema, Bas Uele, and Mongala,” Terese Hart of the NGO Lukuru Foundation that works to protect gray parrots in the DRC, told Mongabay by email.

The decree effectively cuts off transport in and through Tshopo, she added, which will disrupt the movement of parrots to international airports, like in Kinshasa, the DRC capital.

“The main driving force behind the trade in DRC is very high international demand,” Hart said. This is despite the gray parrot being included in Appendix I of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, in 2016. That listing means all international commercial trade in wild-caught gray parrots is prohibited.

At a February meeting of the CITES Standing Committee in Geneva, experts noted that the trade in gray parrots in the DRC “continues at very high levels.”

The recent Tshopo decree bans the capture and trade of both gray and red-fronted parrots (Poicephalus gulielmi), also called the “green” parrot. It also notes that any aircraft found carrying gray or green parrots without the required authorization “will be considered complicit.”

Including both parrot species in bans is important because traffickers often conceal gray parrots within consignments of red-fronted parrots, which can be legally exported from the DRC under existing CITES rules, Martin said.

In August 2024, for example, Turkish authorities seized a shipment of 309 gray parrots, falsely declared as green parrots, which had originated from Kinshasa.

“It’s vital that wildlife trade regulations take into account these vulnerabilities and we’re encouraged that the decree is forward thinking in this regard,” Martin said.

Banner image of gray parrot by L.Miguel Bugallo Sánchez via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

A recent report assessing the health of U.S. bird populations presents a grim outlook: Birds in the U.S. are declining, and a third of the species — 229 to be precise — are in need of urgent conservation actions.

Among the 112 “Tipping Point species” that have lost more than half of their population in the last 50 years, are the West Coast native Allen’s hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin), the tricolored blackbird (Agelaius tricolor) endemic to California, and saltmarsh sparrow (Ammospiza caudacuta) found in the tidal salt marshes of the East Coast.

The report comes five years after a groundbreaking study that showed North America has lost more than three billion birds since 1970. These declines, the report finds, are ongoing for all bird groups—shorebirds, grassland birds, arid land birds, and forest birds. Even birds that were trending up since 1970, such as ducks, have experienced population declines as climate change has taken hold in recent years.

The report is a “cause for alarm,”  Jeff Walters, from the American Ornithological Society, one of the organizations involved in writing the report, said in a statement. He added that it is also a “cause for hope” because of the heightened public interest in birds and the wealth of information available about the status of every bird species.

The report also highlights how conservation initiatives across the U.S. have helped reverse some declines. Coordinated coastal restoration initiatives on the U.S. East Coast, for example, have increased American oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus) breeding population by 43% in the last 15 years. Bird-friendly ranching programs in North Dakota propelled a 20% increase in the population of the Baird’s sparrow (Centronyx bairdii) between 2017 and 2020. Translocation projects in Hawaii and other Pacific Islands have increased populations of several seabird species.

“We have clear evidence that conservation works in halting declines,” said Michael J. Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy, also involved in the report, in a statement. “What we now need more than ever are programs and funding that match the scale of the greatest challenges birds face today.”

Bird conservation also benefits people and the economy, the report notes. Restoring bird habitats provides clean water, climate-resilient landscapes and jobs. A 2022 survey found roughly 100 million Americans enjoy bird watching as a hobby that contributes $279 billion to the country’s economy yearly and supports 1.4 million jobs.

“This report is very timely,” told conservationist and birdwatcher Chris Shepherd from Monitor Conservation Research Society, Canada, in an interview.

Shepherd, who wasn’t involved in the report, said people can help with the crisis of declining bird populations by keeping cats indoors and supporting conservation organizations to help reverse the trend. “Conservation organizations need support more now than ever, and so does wildlife, birds included.”

Banner image of Allen’s hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin) by Becky Matsubara via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).