My Son is known for its brick towers, not its animals. Over one winter, 30 camera traps in the forest around the temples recorded 27 wild species - ten protected under Vietnamese law, one threatened worldwide - and the record claims nothing more than who was there. At 16:27 on 29 December 2025, a camera trap in the forest around My Son photographed an adult northern pig-tailed macaque sitting in the leaf litter, one youngster at its side staring into the lens and another trot

Scorpionfish spend their lives motionless on the reefs of Da Nang, so well camouflaged that a foot can find them before an eye does. The reefs that hide them are shrinking, and the one scorpionfish Vietnamese law protects shares its name with a stonefish sold as a delicacy. A scorpionfish hunts by keeping still. It settles on a rock and waits until a small fish or crustacean comes close enough to be caught in a sudden suck of the mouth [1],[2]. Its defence works the same way.

The Whimbrel is not a threatened species, and the reasons it has stayed common are the most useful thing it can teach. On a coast where the tide moves less than a metre and the shoreline is being rebuilt, this crab-hunting curlew shows what a migrant needs from every stretch of shore it uses, here and along a route that runs from Siberia to Australia. In April 2018, three Whimbrels fitted with satellite tags in eastern Australia set off north and flew an average of 7,121 kilo