Wildlife smugglers will do just about anything for a quick buck, including sneaking a live predator onto an airplane with no regard for the risk to the animal or fellow passengers. This illegal activity reached a devastating and absurdist extreme recently when a man reportedly smuggled a live crocodile onto a plane departing from the [...]

Oh, baby. The discovery of a one-month-old tuatara, a rare reptile descended from lizard-like dinosaurs, has conservationists in New Zealand celebrating. The critter is the first baby tuatara to be spotted on the mainland there in two centuries, since zoologists released 200 adults inside the Kaori Wildlife Sanctuary beginning four years ago in the hope [...]

Modern crocodiles might have sharp, flesh-tearing teeth, but they cannot chew like us humans. In fact, mammals have cornered the market on mastication, leaving other life-forms to simply shred their food before ingesting it. But a newly described Cretaceous crocodile relative (Pakasuchus kapilimai) seems to have been trying out a little chewing itself. Whereas surviving [...]

In ancient Mesozoic seas, the biggest predators might not have been entirely cold-blooded killers. Rather, a new study suggests some of these rapacious reptiles might have been able to regulate their own body temperature, thereby expanding their hunting ranges.  Some modern aquatic reptiles, including leatherback turtles, as well as some sharks and tuna are able [...]

Every animal has its own parasites to worry about, but canivorous reptiles and amphibians have to deal with particularly gruesome ones. They can become infected with small, worm-like creatures called pentastomes that live inside their lungs, where they suck blood from ruptured blood vessels. Reptiles pick up the parasite when they eat infected prey. Pentastomes [...]