A Mexican long-tongued bat, featured above, flies into the blooms of an agave plant, a feeding and pollination technique used to reach nectar. The bats (Choeronycteris mexicana) have unusually long tongues to access nectar while their impact spreads pollen grains everywhere to pollinate nearby agave.

Peter Hudson, a professor of biology at Penn State University, U.S., photographed the moment in 2019 in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert near the U.S.-Mexico border. The region is a biodiversity hotspot, home to native species including trogons and black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus californicus).

“These bats just go, like little kids on a sugar rush,” Hudson told Mongabay by phone. “They’re taking in so much of this rich sugar stuff that they’re flying about doing happy laps, as it were, in the sky.”

The bats’ long tongues can extend nearly 8 centimeters (3 inches) from their body and are covered in hair-like protusions, papillae, that help it drink nectar from flowers. They primarily feed on agave nectar, cactus flowers, soft fruits and the occasional insect.

Hudson used a movement trigger and flash to snap the moment. “It all happens so fast,” he said. “You have to get the bat as it’s coming into the plant and see if you can capture it as it hits the plant.”

The agave plant is used to make tequila and mezcal, Mexico’s national spirit. As demand for export has increased, the country has experienced a more than 700% surge in mezcal production in the past decade.

The jump in demand for Mexican spirits has been a double-edged sword for the three bat species that pollinate agave: the Mexican long-tongued bat, the lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) and the greater long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris nivalis).

“Planting of the agave has increased as people want more and more agave to make tequila,” Hudson said. “So, there is an industry there which, on the one hand, seems to be benefiting the bats; but on the other hand, the wild agave is getting less.”

Agave cultivation is driving a decline in wild agave and deforestation, though scientists don’t know the true extent of deforestation, Alfonso Valiente, an ecologist at the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Mongabay in 2023.

In Matatlán, a major mezcal-producing region in the south of Mexico, forest loss linked to mezcal production between 2000 and 2012 was around 36%, as producers expanded their agave farms onto hillsides with native vegetation. Yet in other agave-producing regions, producers use agroecological systems, in which 30% of agave plants are reserved for bats, limiting the amount harvested for mezcal production to 70%.

The Mexican long-tongued bat is currently listed as near threatened by the IUCN Red List, the global conservation authority.

Banner image: A Mexican long-tongued bat feeds from an agave flower in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, U.S. Image courtesy of Peter Hudson.

A new book from Indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta of Australia explores how human narratives dictate how modern society governs itself and, crucially, how it exploits or protects the natural world.

“It’s a terrible thing to … misrepresent things, make false claims, bear false witness in a way that is bending story, the story that everybody follows,” Yunkaporta told Mongabay’s newscast host Mike DiGirolamo. Yunkaporta is a Deakin University senior research fellow and member of the Apalech clan (Wik) whose traditional lands are located in far north Queensland, Australia.

His book, Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking, argues that identifying and correcting “wrong stories” is key to stopping environmental exploitation. A wrong story, according to Yunkaporta, is one that acts as a deceptive “curse” by presenting an illusion as if it were real to justify the exploitation of nature and community well-being through narratives that have no connection to the land.

To illustrate the “wrong story” of modern resource exploitation, Yunkaporta told Mongabay the Aboriginal folk tale of Tidalik, a giant frog who hoarded all the world’s water for himself. Yunkaporta compares Tidalik to Wall Street firms and billionaires who gamble on water futures and “park their cash” in housing, exacerbating the affordability crisis while stopping the natural flow of resources.

In the legend, the animal kingdom does not “eat” Tidalik; instead, an eel makes him laugh by tying himself in knots, forcing the frog to “vomit all the water back into the land.”

“A lot of people say, ‘Eat the rich.’ I say, ‘Entertain the rich,’” Yunkaporta said.

The antidote to these destructive patterns lies in “First Law,” an Indigenous explanation of how people relate to each other and the land, Yunkaporta said. “The first relation is between land and people, and the second relation is between people and people. The second is contingent on the first,” Yunkaporta wrote in the book.

By adopting what Yunkaporta calls the “sacred mind,” individuals can see themselves not as isolated actors but as a “collection of relationships, connections, [and] obligations” to the natural world. This Indigenous perspective offers a pathway toward a more sustainable society by shifting the focus from possession to belonging, he elaborated.

Yunkaporta’s upcoming book, Snake Talk, will further detail “S,” foundational narratives shared across many human cultures that he said he believes can bridge global divides and help humans find “leverage points” to heal the planet.

Listen to the full conversation with Tyson Yunkaporta here.

Banner image of eight Australian Indigenous ways of learning, based on Tyson Yungaporta’s 2009 research thesis. Image via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

When invasive rats are removed from islands, the ecological benefits can ripple across both land and sea more quickly than scientists expected, according to recent research.

Scientists have long assumed that meaningful recovery after the predators are eradicated would take decades. However, researchers with the U.S.-based NGO Island Conservation conducted a rat-removal experiment on Ulong Island in Palau, which provides the first experimental evidence that ecosystems can rebound far more quickly than previously expected.

Until recently, rats, which are typically nocturnal, were so abundant on Ulong Island that they were regularly seen during the day. They were a nuisance to campers and deadly for wildlife.

As opportunistic omnivores, rats readily prey upon seabird eggs and chicks, devastating nesting colonies on tropical islands. As a result, there were “very few nesting seabirds that we would find,” Coral Wolf, the conservation science program manager at Island Conservation, told Mongabay in a video call.

To measure the effects of rat eradication, Wolf designed an experiment in which all the rats were removed from Ulong, while the rats on nearby Ngeruktabel Island remained, serving as a control site. Before the eradication, researchers collected baseline biodiversity data. On land, they recorded bird calls and took soil samples. In the surrounding water, they measured indicators like fish biomass and coral cover.

One year after rats were removed, the team repeated the survey and found a dramatic improvement in the biodiversity. Freed from rat predation, seabird activity on the island surged. Detections of bridled tern (Onychoprion anaethetus) calls rose by 286% while brown noddy (Anous stolidus) and white tern (Gygis sp.) calls increased by roughly 50%.

Seabirds are critical connector species in what scientists recently dubbed the “circular seabird economy.”

“They’re out foraging, they feed on fish [and] they bring those nutrients back to the island,” Wolf said. Such nutrients accumulate on land, improving soil quality, and are eventually washed back into the sea where they enrich surrounding marine ecosystems, she added.  

Areas with large seabird populations are associated with more phytoplankton in the marine environment, higher fish biomass and better coral health, Wolf said.

On Ulong, researchers found fish biomass increased significantly once rats were removed. One location recorded a 183% increase. Increased nutrients in the water also appear to be supporting reef-building coral. In a statement shared with Mongabay, Island Conservation said early results suggest “seabird-derived nutrients [are] beginning to fuel reef productivity,” around the island.

“It’s powerful proof that terrestrial action spills over into benefits for surrounding reef communities, which people rely on for their livelihoods,” Nathaniel Hanna Holloway, marine ecologist at Scripps Oceanography, said in a statement. 

Wolf said the team had expected such improvements to Ulong Island’s ecosystem would take decades. Seeing measurable gains after just a year, she said, “is pretty remarkable and gives us hope for the restoration of the Rock Islands across this island community.”

The study is currently being submitted for publication.

Banner image: A rainbow over Ulong Island. Image courtesy of Island Conservation.

The Bornean ferret badger is a small carnivore with the slinky body of a ferret and a face mask like a badger. A new study confirms that it lives only in the mountains of Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. 

Ferret badgers are nocturnal carnivores, widespread across Southeast Asia, but the Bornean ferret badger (Melogale everetti) lives only in a narrow mountain range on the island of Borneo. A group of researchers from the Bornean Carnivore Programme, part of the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), Sabah Forestry Department, and Sabah Parks set out to understand the Bornean ferret-badger’s distribution within Sabah.

Between 2021 and 2024, the research team set up 188 camera-trap stations across Sabah’s western highlands and recorded the badgers more than 400 times, discovering a new population in the process. The new population in the Nuluhon-Trusmadi Forest Reserve of Malaysian Borneo, expanded the known range of the species, but photo-traps and habitat modeling showed that Bornean ferret badgers are only found within the greater Sabah’s Kinabalu-Crocker-Trusmadi mountain landscape.

 “I grew up in Tambunan and had never seen or even heard of the Bornean ferret badger,” said Mohammad Aliyuddin bin Jaini, field manager of the Bornean Carnivore Programme in a press release. “I decided to place some camera traps around my family’s farm simply to see what wildlife might be there, and I was amazed when a Bornean ferret badger appeared in the photographs. To discover that an Endangered species found only in Sabah was living right on our doorstep was a special moment.”

The researchers propose using the common name Kinabalu ferret badger, after its core range on Mount Kinabalu, to help people realize how special the species is. “[N]ames can play an important role in shaping how people perceive a species and their connection to it,” lead author of the study Andrew Hearn told Mongabay in an email.

“Several of these communities already have small-scale ecotourism initiatives, and we would like to explore whether the ferret badger could become an additional attraction for wildlife enthusiasts,” Hearn said. “If local communities can derive benefits from protecting the species, that could provide a powerful incentive for its long-term conservation.”

Benoit Goossens, an expert on Bornean wildlife who was not involved with the study, told Mongabay in an email that refining the habitat map for Bornean ferret badgers is crucial for their conservation.

 “In a rapidly changing landscape where forests continue to face pressures from development and climate change, knowing where the species lives is the first step toward ensuring its long-term survival,” Goossens said.

 Banner image: A Bornean ferret badger. Image courtesy of Surinkumar via iNaturalist. (CC BY-NC 4.0)

On June 6, nine female white rhinos arrived in Mozambique’s Zinave National Park following a two-day translocation. Their arrival marks the culmination of nearly 10 years of rhino reintroduction efforts in the park, aimed at rebuilding a viable breeding population of the mammals in Zinave after decades of local extinction.

The white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) were transferred from the Manketti Game Reserve in South Africa and join another 30 white rhinos and 22 black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) introduced to Zinave since 2022.

“[The translocation] went fantastically well,” Antony Alexander, a regional manager for the conservation nonprofit Peace Parks Foundation, which manages Zinave and organized the translocation, told Mongabay by phone. “I’m sure they’re happy to be in the wild again.”

Zinave, which covers around 4,090 square kilometers (1,580 square miles) in the southern province of Inhambane, has previously been called a “silent park” after decades of civil war wiped out much of its wildlife.

“You could almost sense the very low levels of life with insects and birds and smells and sounds,” said Alexander, describing Zinave before wildlife restoration efforts began. “That’s changed dramatically over the last 10 years.”

Among the species reintroduced since 2016 are the critically endangered black rhino and Selous’ zebra (Equus quagga selousi), as well as the endangered African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), vulnerable leopard (Panthera pardus) and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta).

The rhinos help maintain Zinave’s ecosystem as they are bulk grazers, eating a high volume of grass. This helps prevent fire risk, as overgrown grass can enable the spread of wildfires in drier conditions.

“You can imagine if you don’t have rhinos in the park, which was the situation in Zinave National Park when we first started 10 years ago. We were at a park that had very high grass levels, which is a very large fire hazard,” said Alexander.

Lower levels of grass also makes the ecosystem more accommodating for species such as impala, wildebeest, and several insects and birds, he added.

The rhinos of Zinave may subsequently become feeder populations to establish rhinos in other Mozambican parks as they are expected to produce offspring in the coming years. So far, five black rhino and two white rhino calves have been born and successfully raised in Zinave.

The white rhino population “can potentially expand across Mozambique”, said Alexander, warning that conservation efforts take several years of planning and preparation to be successful. “Of course, it doesn’t come easily; one’s got to spend many years preparing for it.”

Banner image: Rhino released into the boma, a large wildlife enclosure, inside Zinave National Park’s rhino sanctuary. Image © Peace Parks Foundation.

The rumble of ship traffic is drowning out the calls of long-finned pilot whales and potentially other marine species in the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow strip of water between Morocco and Spain that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean Sea.

Researchers who investigated this looked at near and long-distance communication between long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas), which are actually a species of large dolphin. They found the mammals were able to increase the volume of their calls used for short distances, but long-distance calling was more challenging, according to their recently published study.

The dolphins may not be able to overpower noise pollution in the Strait of Gibraltar when calling pod mates far away, raising concerns that they could become lost and isolated from the group, the researchers said. Roughly 60,000 ships pass through the Strait of Gibraltar each year.

“If they cannot communicate with one another, they may need to stay much closer together, or all that communication may become ineffective,” study co-author Renaud de Stephanis, director at the Spain-based organization CIRCE (Conservación, Información y Estudio sobre Cetáceos), told Mongabay by phone.

Researchers focused the study on a small resident population of roughly 250 pilot whales in the strait. The team attached suction-cup recorders to the backs of 23 individuals. Later, they categorized more than 1,400 calls into four different categories. They found that pilot whales were able to adjust to the noise pollution for two types of calls, the high-frequency and short-pulsed calls, by simply raising their voices.

This phenomenon is called the Lombard response, and it’s observed in several animals, including humans. It is the reason why people speak more quietly in silent environments and more loudly in a noisy restaurant, for example.

But for two other types of pilot whale calls, the animals were not able to activate the Lombard response. For low-frequency calls and two-component calls, in which the animals emit two different sounds at the same time, the marine mammals were already calling as loudly as possible.

“Both low-frequency and particularly two-component calls were produced at relatively high output levels in general, and showed very limited Lombard response,” study co-author Frants Jensen told Mongabay by email. “This is important since those are long-distance call types they likely use for ensuring group cohesion and finding each other after separations.” 

De Stephanis said the study results raise conservation concerns for other marine animals in the region, including orcas (Orcinus orca).

“Given that that this happens with pilot whales, it is likely that it also happens for other whale species. We aren’t sure yet because it is a very difficult study to carry out,” de Stephanis said. “In addition to generating noise that affects smaller species such as pilot whales and orcas, larger species can suffer from ship strikes.”

Banner image: Pilot whale (Globicephala melas) off the coast of Spain. Image courtesy of circe.info.