The World's Most Endangered Tortoise

A couple of months agp, smugglers were caught transporting 54 live angonoka (or ploughshare) tortoises--nearly 13 percent of the entire remaining population--through the Thailand Airport. Mind you, this is the world's rarest tortoise species. Tortoise advocate Eric Goode told CBS last year that the tortoise "has an incredibly high price on its head. Asian countries love gold and this is a gold tortoise. And so literally, these are like gold bricks that one can pick up and sell."

Photo by Hans Hillewaert via Wikimedia

Learn more about the angonoka tortoise and efforts to save it from extinction here.