Individuals Are Utilizing TikTok to Promote Endangered Animals to Eat
TikTok is quickly rising in Africa and is getting used to promote bushmeat, underscoring the function of social media within the international unlawful wildlife commerce
A pangolin launched again into the wild in Indonesia after being seized from smugglers.
NurPhoto/NurPhoto through Getty Pictures
Content material warning: This text reviews on violence towards endangered animals.
Critically endangered animals are being marketed on the market as bushmeat on TikTok, a brand new research finds. The work, revealed not too long ago in Nature Conservation, underscores the rising function social media performs within the international unlawful wildlife commerce.
Bushmeat—meat sourced from wild animals—is usually eaten in lots of African and a few Asian international locations. Although some individuals hunt for private consumption, many hunters promote meat to regional merchants, who could then promote it to households or eating places.
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The brand new research builds on older analysis linking social media to the wildlife commerce. A 2023 research, for instance, confirmed how Fb was utilized by the bushmeat commerce in West Africa. Now TikTok is on the rise in Africa—which led a global crew of researchers to look at its potential function within the unlawful wildlife commerce in Lomé, Togo.
The researchers assessed 80 movies from two public TikTok accounts, recording an estimated 27 species and three,526 particular person animals, together with endangered pangolins and a susceptible antelope species. The accounts had been primarily used to promote meat on the market at bodily markets in Lomé quite than immediately by TikTok, says the nonprofit World Animal Safety’s head of analysis, Angie Elwin, a co-author of the research.
“Platforms like TikTok have basically change into digital marketplaces, which permit sellers to promote wild meat to a lot wider audiences than conventional roadside stalls or city markets,” she says. “This brings new customers to the market and is probably scaling up demand and accessibility.”
TikTok didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Screenshots from movies posted on the TikTok accounts of two wild meat merchants in Lomé, Togo.
From “Viral threats: the function of TikTok in facilitating commerce in CITES-listed species in Lomé, Togo” by Delagnon Assou et al., in Nature Conservation 59; August 13,2025 (CC BY 4.0)
Researchers are involved by the rising commerce in bushmeat, each as a result of it raises the strain on endangered species and since it’s related to a excessive danger of spreading ailments from animals to individuals.
Jack Jenkins, an anthropologist at Durham College in England, spent six months in Sierra Leone following bushmeat hunters and merchants to higher perceive the well being threats the apply can pose. Such a menace “could possibly be a novel virus, which has the potential to trigger a brand new epidemic and even pandemic,” says Jenkins, who was not concerned within the new analysis. “It is a concern notably in Sierra Leone due to the historical past of Ebola.”
Endangered species face many threats, however the rising commercialization of the bushmeat commerce is “regarding,” says Christian Plowman, an professional in wildlife cybercrime on the nonprofit Worldwide Fund for Animal Welfare, who additionally was not concerned within the analysis.
Different researchers argue that you will need to take bushmeat’s cultural significance under consideration. Jenkins says that many individuals in Sierra Leone favor it to different, extra commercialized meats equivalent to beef or hen. “It’s one thing that individuals have eaten for generations,” he says. Many hunters have little understanding of wildlife safety legal guidelines and don’t differentiate between protected and nonprotected species, he provides.
The brand new research acknowledges the significance of untamed meat as a supply of each protein and earnings, however Elwin stresses that utilizing social media to advertise bushmeat is distinct from searching an animal for sustenance.
“What social media is basically doing is pushing the commerce far past subsistence,” she says, “amplifying the business gross sales, normalizing demand and placing endangered species like pangolins at even better danger.”
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