Animal advocates are celebrating a landmark ruling against wildlife traffickers who were arrested last fall in Indonesia after they were caught in connection with a criminal network trading endangered slow lorises. The operation, which was part of an effort to dismantle an illegal wildlife trafficking network that was using Facebook to sell wildlife, was carried […]
An exotic pet is any animal that would not typically be considered a pet. Animals like snakes, sugar gliders, monkeys and scorpions are becoming more common in private homes. In the United States alone, it’s estimated that over 19 million households now have an exotic pet of some kind. Many would argue this is a […]
The tourism industry has taken some big steps to stop the exploitation of wild animals, but a recent rescue effort has highlighted how much more needs to be done on our part to help stop the illegal wildlife trade. After receiving reports of 17 endangered slow lorises being kept in deplorable conditions as an attraction […]
From the Malayan sun bear to a blood python, Malaysians seem to have found a booming marketplace for wild animals on Facebook. Much of this online trade is carried out in closed Facebook groups, and involves live, high-profile and threatened species for which trade is strictly prohibited in Peninsular Malaysia, a five-month investigation by wildlife […]
It all started with a video: in 2009 a Russian man uploaded a video of himself tickling his exotic pet (a pygmy slow loris) from Vietnam onto the hugely popular site YouTube. Since then the video has been viewed over half a million times. But a new study in the open source journal in PLoS […]