Four Chinese men face deportation from Zimbabwe after they were arrested on charges of cruelty to tortoises, according to local media.

Out of America: The US loves movies about bizarre creatures wreaking havoc. Now it's got them for real

If you go down to the Florida Everglades today, you're in for a big surprise: in the past 12 years, 90 per cent of the wild mammals which once roamed freely through the National Park have gone.

A man tried to board a plane in Argentina with almost 250 poisonous snakes and endangered reptiles in his baggage, each meticulously labelled with its Latin name.

Australia’s saltwater crocodiles are notoriously fond of human flesh. But yesterday it was a lawnmower that took the fancy of Elvis, a 16-foot croc living in a reptile park north of Sydney.

Police have discovered 11 Nile crocodiles – five of them squeezed into a small shower – and an alligator at a house.

A man is in custody after being accused of biting a python in what police in California said was apparently an unprovoked attack on a friend's pet snake. The suspect, David Senk, 54, was arrested on suspicion of unlawfully maiming a reptile, Sacramento police said. The snake was badly injured and needed stitches after surgery to its wounds.

An alligator has attacked and severely injured a 90-year-old woman in south-west Florida.

A snake breeder has been killed by one of his king cobras only days after speaking about how he was trying to save the "dangerous but misunderstood" species from extinction.

Turtles and tortoises are now the most endangered group of vertebrate animals, with more than half of their 328 species threatened with extinction, according to a new report.

A mystery caller knocked on a woman's door - and left a four-foot snake on her doorstep.

A fire in Brazil has destroyed what may have been the world's largest scientific collection of dead snakes, spiders and scorpions, which served as the main source for research on many species.

They have been around since the time of the dinosaurs and have in the past survived several global mass extinctions of species, but now lizards are at serious risk of disappearing from the face of the earth as a result of climate change, scientists said yesterday.