Smugglers are getting rich from the world’s slimiest black market: baby eels. The fragile state of freshwater eel species, like the critically endangered European eel, has driven a multibillion-dollar international trafficking trade. We look at the crackdown on eel crime around the world, including Interpol’s war on smuggling in Europe, and the growing attempts to save a species on the brink.
Tag Archives: animals
Resurrecting the Wooly Mamouth
Right now, in the 21st century, South Korean scientists are actually working to resurrect the prehistoric woolly mammoth using cloning technology and the flesh of a perfectly preserved specimen once buried in Northern Siberia. The hope is that if they can find an active cell from the meaty leg of a 40,000 year old frozen mammoth, it could hold the keys to bringing back the extinct species.
At the same time, shady tusk hunting Siberians looking for mammoth ivory support the Korean cloning project, by discovering frozen mammoths in the quickly melting permafrost of the Russian Far North. This bizarre supply chain inspired us to travel to Seoul, Yakutsk, and Moscow, to learn about humanity’s quest to both profit from, and clone, the legendary woolly mammoth.
The World’s Cutest Animals
We feature several people who work with and care for various types of animals, sharing their experiences and insights on why they consider these animals to be the cutest.
The Dark Web (series)
There’s a dark side to the internet, and you probably don’t even know it exists. Look behind the positive veneer of social media, communication apps and platforms that have made our lives easier and more connected, and you’ll find criminals using the same apps and platforms to run illicit and dangerous activities.
Sextortion syndicates target victims globally through social media. Illegal wildlife trades thrive on social consumer marketplaces. Digital black markets operate anonymously using software designed for press privacy and freedom to sell drugs. Secret child pornography rings run rampant in secret, closed groups and private chats.
This explosive new series lifts the lid on how criminal organisations are thriving in this new digital frontier.
Episode One – The Queen of Sextortion
Sextortion was invented by one woman in the Philippines, Maria Caparas. She turned the idea of making friends online and recording explicit video chats into a profitable blackmail and extortion scam that could not exist without social media. She now runs a mini empire seemingly beyond the reach of authorities, that has led to many suicides.
Episode Two – Wildlife Clickbait
They may look like ordinary posts of exotic pets for sale on social media. But they are feeding a growing trade in illegal and endangered animals in Malaysia and beyond. This criminal industry is worth billions and is jeopardising attempts to protect endangered species.
Episode Three – Black Market Boom
Drugs, guns, counterfeit documents and much more are sold on dark web marketplaces that run on anonymous browsers and using cryptocurrency. AlphaBay was the biggest marketplace, transacting over US$800,000 in a day enabling its founder to live a luxury lifestyle in anonymity, until international law enforcement caught up with him.
Episode Four – The Candyman
It was one of 640 million closed groups on Facebook. Hiding behind the anonymity, the creator of child pornography group Loli Candy and its 7,000 members hid their activities on Facebook and Whatsapp – the dissemination of horrifying images of abuse. While they were eventually bought to justice many more thrive.
The Power of Play
Lizards do it. Even fish do it. The animal world is showing us why play is a serious matter.
Through a combination of ongoing experiments, reconstructed experiments and guided observation, The Power of Play reveals surprising truths about play in the natural world.
Scientists from Europe, the United States and Canada, many of them pioneers in the field, offer convincing evidence that play is not to be taken lightly. In fact, it has the power to make animals and humans smarter, healthier and more likely to survive.
The Rise of Deadly Tiger Attacks
Residents of the protected Leuser National Park in Aceh struggle to keep Sumatran tigers away from their livestock and homes. Once a rarity, these kinds of attacks are now on the rise in North Sumatra. Between 2019 and 2020, Sumatran tigers killed at least 20 cattle in this region alone.
The attacks are also an economic strain on the region’s farmers, costing around $10,000 in lost cattle. But there’s another, more concerning outcome of the rise in attacks—an environment of fear amongst those who call the forest borderlands their home.
Great White North
With a never-before-seen explosion of Great White Shark encounters off Canada’s East Coast, we embark on a research expedition to unlock the secrets of these elusive apex predators that have invaded Canada’s ocean playground.
A recent spate of close encounters with Great White Sharks has brought together a team of researchers and scientists to conduct a ground-breaking research expedition.
Using an array of underwater cameras, ground-breaking early advance multi-beam sonar imaging, ROV cameras, underwater acoustic technology, and drone photography, our team will prove that not only are great whites here, but in much larger numbers than anyone had imagined.
The expedition will also break new ground in expanding our knowledge of these elusive apex predators. Many questions remain to be answered: how many great whites are visiting North Atlantic Waters and for how long. Are they reproducing there, or just summer visitors feasting on seals and tuna? What role does climate change play in the proliferation of sharks in the Northwest Atlantic? Are these curious juveniles carving out new territory, or mature breeding adults that are expanding their range? What impact are they having on the local ecosystem, and does their presence mean the North Atlantic Ocean is becoming healthier?
Searching for Nika
When Russian forces invaded Ukraine and bombed Kyiv, film director Stas Kapralov’s family dog, Nika, ran away… Determined to find her, Stas sets out into the devastation and documents his journey as he joins volunteers helping to rescue animals. Becoming a part of their cause, Stas films the trials and successes of the volunteers as he continues his search for Nika, which takes him to ‘Sirus’ Animal Shelter, the largest in Europe, housing 3,500 animals, and still receiving emaciated and hungry dogs daily. There he meets Alexandra, the shelter director, who regularly risks her life to find food for the animals and is determined never to abandon them. Alexandra’s iron inspires Stas, and even though he is unable to locate Nika, he does not give up hope and decides to take a more active role in helping the volunteers and animals in need.
Joining forces with another volunteer, Olena, Stas documents and aids in rescuing a blind and abandoned lion, Ruru, as she’s brought across the Ukrainian border to Poland. Later, he meets Alex, a volunteer who helped Kyiv inhabitants escape the city at the start of the war and now risks his life rescuing cats left behind by their owners… Among the rubble of a bombed and burned stables, Stas hears Yura’s story, whose horses were like family members, many dying in the bombings, as he now searches for a safe home for them… In another instance, Stas journeys to Harkov, experiencing mortar shelling first-hand, as he becomes part of urgent evacuations of animals at a zoo actively being bombed, where two volunteers had been killed in previous days…
What begins as a journey motivated by the disappearance of his dog, Nika, becomes a mission to document and aid in a humanitarian movement to help as many animals as possible in Ukraine. Documenting and participating in this journey, Stas discovers stories of altruism and humanity amidst the harshest landscape of war… and by the end of his journey, Stas finally finds out what happened to his dog Nika.
The Cartels Cash Catch
There’s a race to save a dozen small cetaceans, the last in the world of their species. They’re caught as bycatch in nets set to trap a fish with a huge demand in China. Can anything be done?
It all begins in Mexico, in the Gulf of California, just 97 miles from the US, where the totoaba is endemic. The demand for its swim bladder is at the heart of the issue. Two key towns in this region, San Felipe and Santa Clara, rely almost entirely on fishing shrimp and local fish. Times are perpetually challenging but engaging in illicit totoaba fishing can yield a substantial paycheck. They became overfished in the 2010s when a catch like this could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.
Adding to the severity of the situation for this endangered fish, the nets used to catch this species, as well as those used for local shrimp, have inadvertently captured a small porpoise native to the Gulf of California, Mexico: the vaquita marina. This has pushed it to the brink of extinction. The latest survey in 2024 was only able to spot 6-8 vaquitas, from 10-13 last year. The US is exerting pressure on Mexico over the issue, and scientists, along with environmentalists and law enforcement in several countries, are working tirelessly to save the vaquita, halt totoaba trafficking and develop sustainable alternatives to harmful nets.