Seven of Brazil’s nine Amazonian states are set to be governed by politicians aligned with far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, Karla Mendes and Lucas Berti reported for Mongabay Brasil. On Oct. 25, Brazil will have an electoral face-off between the top two candidates for several races that were not able to secure more than 50% of the vote in the first round of the elections. The second round election includes the decision for president, where incumbent leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is up against Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro who is barred from public office after being convicted of planning a coup d’état in 2022. The second vote will also define many of the state governments in the Brazilian Amazon. In the first round on Oct. 4, five candidates won a clear majority and have already been elected. Mato Grosso, an agricultural state in the southwest of the Brazilian Amazon, elected agribusinessman Otaviano Pivetta, aligned with the right-wing party Republicanos. Pará elected Daniel Santos, known as Dr. Daniel, with the Podemos party. He has promised to designate Vinícius Borba to lead the environment department. Borba is a lawyer who gained notoriety for representing farmers illegally raising cattle on Indigenous land. In Roraima, Brazil’s northernmost state that borders Venezuela and Guyana, nearly 70% of voters elected Arthur Henrique, affiliated with Flávio Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party. He previously served as the popular mayor of the state’s capital city, Boa Vista. He supports legalizing mining in Indigenous territories.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The Iranian spider-tailed horned viper, a rare snake endemic to western Iran, hunts by holding its body completely still while twitching its tail. Its body camouflages among the rocks of its semi-arid Zagros Mountains habitat, but its bulbous tail with accompanying leg-like scales looks remarkably like a large chunky spider. The snake, Pseudocerastes urarachnoides, uses its spider tail to lure unsuspecting mammals and birds to their last meal. Scans of a specimen collected in 1968 and kept in the Field Museum of Natural History in Illinois, United States, now reveal what the lure is made of. “The tip actually consists of enlarged, elongated and modified scales, which are unique among all living reptiles,” lead author Georgios Georgalis, an associate professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals in Kraków, Poland, told Mongabay by email. The scanned P. urarachnoides specimen. Image © Georgalis et al. (2026). Vipers have attracted the interest of researchers for centuries, Georgalis said, but knowledge of the group’s morphology is still limited. Scientists described P. urarachnoides for science in 2006, but only this year did they publish a high-resolution 3D scan to see the mechanism inside the snake’s tail as part of a scientific study. The tail filaments, the authors said, loosely resemble those found on some ornithodiran archosaurs and other forms from the Triassic and Jurassic periods. This doesn’t mean that they are related, it’s more likely a case of convergent evolution: similar environmental demands pushing the evolutionary development of similar characteristics.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Oil slicks from vessels and offshore oil operations repeatedly drifted into marine protected areas around the world between 2022 and 2025, a new analysis has found. The report raises concerns for important habitats for a variety of marine life, including whales, dolphins, and sea turtles. Researchers from SkyTruth, a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks oil pollution using satellite imagery, detected dozens of slicks covering hundreds of square kilometers in protected waters globally. “We’re seeing persistent, repeated, chronic oil pollution in many parts of the ocean from shipping and offshore oil and gas operations,” SkyTruth CEO John Amos told Mongabay by phone. “Wind and current blow them around out in the ocean, so even if the pollution event that occurs is outside a marine protected area, that pollution could drift into the protected area.” Map by Emilie Languedoc/Mongabay. The worst oil pollution in an MPA was recorded along the Atlantic coast of the Republic of Congo’s Conkouati-Douli National Park. SkyTruth recorded 27 oil slicks covering 880 square kilometers (340 square miles) of the park’s waters. The slicks likely came from three offshore oil platforms located outside the marine park, according to the report. The area is home to sharks, rays, dolphins, whales, and manatees. Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) and olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) sea turtles also nest there. In the Mediterranean Sea, roughly 417 km2 (161 mi2) of oil slicks covered sections of two important marine protected areas. Spain’s Mediterranean Cetacean Migration Corridor registered 45 slicks, all from vessels, the report notes. The…This article was originally published on Mongabay