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Troubled Waters: Jakarta Battles Deadly, Invasive Suckerfish

The sapu-sapu was introduced to Indonesia from South America, brought in to keep aquariums algae free but chucked into rivers as they outgrew their tanks. BAY ISMOYO / AFP
The sapu-sapu was introduced to Indonesia from South America, brought in to keep aquariums algae free but chucked into rivers as they outgrew their tanks. BAY ISMOYO / AFP
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Troubled Waters: Jakarta Battles Deadly, Invasive Suckerfish

The sapu-sapu was introduced to Indonesia from South America, brought in to keep aquariums algae free but chucked into rivers as they outgrew their tanks. BAY ISMOYO / AFP
The sapu-sapu was introduced to Indonesia from South America, brought in to keep aquariums algae free but chucked into rivers as they outgrew their tanks. BAY ISMOYO / AFP

Mounds of slimey carcasses pile up on a riverbank in Jakarta where authorities are fighting an uphill battle against a fast-breeding invasive fish flourishing in Java island's heavily polluted waterways.

The sapu-sapu, a sucking fish introduced from South America decades ago to keep Southeast Asian aquariums algae-free, has made a home in Javan rivers, many after being thrown out for outgrowing their tanks.

Unlike in the Amazon River where it has natural predators, the sapu-sapu quickly took over in Java, outbreeding indigenous freshwater fish, eating their eggs and outcompeting them for food.

Residents and campaigners have complained about the stinky, unsightly pileups of fishy remains, and the potential health risk for those who consume snacks made from polluted sapu-sapu stock.

Invasive species are spreading ever faster across the globe and cost well over $400 billion a year in damages and lost income, according to a 2023 United Nations assessment.

Surprisingly adept at living in polluted water, the sapu-sapu -- also known as suckermouth catfish, janitor fish or pleco -- can grow to half a meter (20 inches) in length and a female can lay thousands of eggs every year.

"That there are thousands of (sapu-sapu) fish in some of these river bodies, where, you know, the rivers are like dark black, almost smelling like rotten eggs... is completely crazy," clean river campaigner Gary Bencheghib told AFP.

Killing sapu-sapu is not addressing the real problem, he added in a phone interview, nearly halfway through a 1,200-kilometer (746-mile) run from Bali to Jakarta to raise money for river cleanups and having witnessed the crisis at several stops along the way.

The real solution is cleaning up "the waste it lives off... that you find in these polluted waters," said Bencheghib, co-founder of the Sungai Watch NGO.

- 'A dangerous snack' -

More than half of Indonesia's rivers are heavily polluted, and two of the country's major river systems are among the dirtiest in the world, according to data from the UN Environment Program.

Nationwide, only about 7.4 percent of municipal wastewater is safely collected and treated.

Greater Jakarta, a water-stressed metropolis of 42 million people, is particularly affected.

But sapu-sapu are able to live in oxygen-poor and polluted waters, digging holes into riverbanks to lay their eggs and weakening walls that have been known to collapse as a result.

In recent weeks, Jakarta has embarked on a killing campaign involving residents, sanitation workers, fisheries ministry workers and even soldiers.

In two weeks, about 5.3 tons of the fish have been removed from rivers in South Jakarta alone, mayor Muhammad Anwar told AFP while overseeing an operation at Babakan Lake this week.

The sapu-sapu are caught in nets, separated from indigenous fish that are thrown back, then decapitated to make sure they are dead, and buried in mass graves.

Some activists have criticized the procedure as wasteful, arguing the skin could be used for fish leather products and the rest processed into fertilizer or animal feed.

But others say the fish are too contaminated to be useful, and definitely not fit for human consumption.

"It contains... heavy metals and is dangerous to humans," Anwar said.

Tests conducted for scientific studies have found traces of lead and mercury as well as E.coli bacteria beyond safe levels in sapu-sapu.

"In some places, it is consumed as a dangerous snack called siomay (steamed fish dumpling) and pempek (fish cakes)," the mayor said.

"Please be careful when buying fish cakes. Don't be led by the (cheap) price."

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Varieties

French Pair Propose New Term to Define 'Environment'

(FILES) In this photo taken on August 5, 2025, a DFCI wildfire defense vehicle from the National Forestry Office (ONF) is seen after the start of the Corbieres wildfire in Ribaute, southwest France. (Photo by Idriss Bigou-Gilles / AFP)
(FILES) In this photo taken on August 5, 2025, a DFCI wildfire defense vehicle from the National Forestry Office (ONF) is seen after the start of the Corbieres wildfire in Ribaute, southwest France. (Photo by Idriss Bigou-Gilles / AFP)
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French Pair Propose New Term to Define 'Environment'

(FILES) In this photo taken on August 5, 2025, a DFCI wildfire defense vehicle from the National Forestry Office (ONF) is seen after the start of the Corbieres wildfire in Ribaute, southwest France. (Photo by Idriss Bigou-Gilles / AFP)
(FILES) In this photo taken on August 5, 2025, a DFCI wildfire defense vehicle from the National Forestry Office (ONF) is seen after the start of the Corbieres wildfire in Ribaute, southwest France. (Photo by Idriss Bigou-Gilles / AFP)

Environmental causes face an uphill battle. Overshadowed in politics, overlooked in budgets and defeated in courts, nature is often treated as a niche concern, second to more pressing matters.

Two Frenchmen -- one a philosopher, the other a legal scholar -- think language is part of the problem and argue that protection of the living world should be discussed in entirely different legal terms.

In their new book, Baptiste Morizot and Laurent Neyret make the case that "habitability" -- the conditions that support human life on Earth -- should be treated as a fundamental right like dignity and liberty.

"Habitability is the condition of all our rights and freedoms," Morizot, a researcher at Aix-Marseille University, told AFP.

Even in France where the environment holds constitutional status, Morizot said the defense of nature as a basic right is often relegated below other core values even if people do not realize it.

"No one has said we should talk about the environment as if it were secondary," the philosopher said. But "it is marginalized; it is not in the realm of importance".

Morizot and Neyret searched for a term that elevated the environment to a fundamental condition of humanity's existence rather than a backdrop to be protected when convenient.

"This word exists. It is habitability," they wrote in "Liberté, Dignité, Habitabilité", the French title of their book published in April which is yet to be translated into English.

The framework of environmental law, the authors write, dates from a time when humans did not yet have the technological capacity to drastically alter Earth's habitability or its climate.

Morizot says "the environment" has become more broadly associated with nature and "people who like flowers and little birds."

"But security is more important, health is more important, growth is more important," he said of the prevailing attitude.

If judges regarded habitability in the same way as liberty then "restrictions on applying pesticides near groundwater would no longer be seen as an arbitrary burden, but as the result of a value recognized by all", the authors wrote.

The concept "prohibits the law from continuing to speak as if the world were an unchanging environment."

Even as environmental protection has slipped down the policy priority list in the United States and Europe, climate activists have scored major courtroom wins recently from the International Court of Justice to national tribunals.

"We are facing a movement where habitability is on the verge of being taken seriously in courtrooms, and where even those who don't want to play along can't opt out," co-author Neyret told AFP.

"By naming habitability, we hope to surface this underground movement, accelerate and amplify it," said the former chief of staff to French Constitutional Council president Laurent Fabius.

The authors acknowledge the widespread adoption of such a term could take years or decades. When will we know that habitability is considered a core value?

"When it is cited in court rulings by judges, when it is enshrined in the constitution... in France or elsewhere, when it appears in the preambles of international declarations," said Morizot.

And above all: "When it enables a judge to tip a case one way or the other," he said.

Varieties

Denmark Performs Autopsy on 'Timmy' the Whale

FILE - Beluga whales swim in a tank at Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, June 9, 2023. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
FILE - Beluga whales swim in a tank at Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, June 9, 2023. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
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Denmark Performs Autopsy on 'Timmy' the Whale

FILE - Beluga whales swim in a tank at Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, June 9, 2023. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
FILE - Beluga whales swim in a tank at Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, June 9, 2023. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

Scientists will on Thursday conduct an autopsy on "Timmy", the humpback whale whose ordeal to return to the open seas captured Germany's hearts and sparked a media frenzy, Danish officials said.

The whale, which had struggled since beaching near the German coast, died after being transported into the North Sea off Denmark aboard a barge and released on May 2 in a last-ditch rescue operation.

"The necropsy is expected to take place this afternoon as planned," the Danish Environmental Protection Agency told AFP in an email.

The results of the examination are to be released later, it added.

"Timmy", as he was dubbed in Germany, was moved on Saturday to the shore of the island of Anholt, near where the animal had been found.

After Timmy was first spotted stricken on a sandbank on March 23, the marine mammal's travails gripped Germany for weeks, with media flocking to the Baltic coast to follow the various attempts to get the whale swimming again.

But after several failed attempts, some experts criticized the continued rescues -- privately financed by wealthy entrepreneurs -- as pointless.

Varieties

Genome Study Shows What Made the Extinct Ice Age Cave Lion Unique

The remains of a frozen female cave lion cub named Sparta, about 32,000 years old and recovered in northeastern Siberia, are pictured in Yakutsk, Russia, in this photograph from 2018, obtained on June 3, 2026. Love Dalen/Handout via REUTERS
The remains of a frozen female cave lion cub named Sparta, about 32,000 years old and recovered in northeastern Siberia, are pictured in Yakutsk, Russia, in this photograph from 2018, obtained on June 3, 2026. Love Dalen/Handout via REUTERS
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Genome Study Shows What Made the Extinct Ice Age Cave Lion Unique

The remains of a frozen female cave lion cub named Sparta, about 32,000 years old and recovered in northeastern Siberia, are pictured in Yakutsk, Russia, in this photograph from 2018, obtained on June 3, 2026. Love Dalen/Handout via REUTERS
The remains of a frozen female cave lion cub named Sparta, about 32,000 years old and recovered in northeastern Siberia, are pictured in Yakutsk, Russia, in this photograph from 2018, obtained on June 3, 2026. Love Dalen/Handout via REUTERS

The cave lion was one of the biggest cats to ever live, prowling a huge swathe of territory from Western Europe across Siberia and into North America and hunting large prey - and perhaps even people - before going extinct around the end of the Ice Age.

New genome research reveals what made this big cat unique and how it differed from the modern lion, its smaller cousin, though the two species did sporadically interbreed. The cave lion, whose scientific name is Panthera spelaea, died out roughly 14,000 years ago.

The researchers compared the genomes of 12 cave lions that lived from 17,000 to 148,000 years ago in places such as Russia, Austria and Canada's Yukon territory with the genomes of 20 modern lions. Cave lion DNA was extracted mostly from bones and teeth, but also from soft tissue in well-preserved frozen cubs from Siberia, where cold conditions helped preserve ancient genetic material. One of these, a female called Sparta, is among the best Ice Age specimens ever found.

"We show that cave lions were not simply Ice Age versions of modern ⁠lions, but ⁠instead represented a highly distinct evolutionary lineage," said evolutionary geneticist Love Dalén of the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a collaboration between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, senior author of the study published in the journal Cell.

According to Reuters, the study showed that the evolutionary lineages of the two species diverged probably around 1.7 million years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch. Each species possessed unique genetic variants that likely adapted them to their different habitats and behaviors. These genetic differences related to growth, vision, brain function and circulatory development.

The cave lion, which despite its name did not actually live in caves, was significantly larger and built more robustly than the modern lion. It dwelled in colder ⁠climes, favoring the open grasslands and tundras of northern Eurasia and northwestern North America. This vanished ecosystem, called the mammoth steppe in a nod to its most prominent inhabitant, resembled today's African savanna but with frigid temperatures.

"The cave lion was absolutely an apex predator, and as such filled an incredibly important and impactful ecological role," said evolutionary geneticist and study lead author David Stanton of Cardiff University in Wales. "They were one of the most widespread carnivores to ever live."

Among its probable prey were woolly mammoths - most likely young or elderly individuals - as well as woolly rhinoceroses, antelope, reindeer, horses and bison. Humans also dwelled in these regions in the Ice Age's later stages.

"While there is no clear evidence that cave lions preyed on humans, it seems highly likely that they occasionally did so. Cave paintings show that Ice Age people were highly familiar with these animals. They are often depicted with remarkable accuracy, and are usually shown without the large mane characteristic of modern male lions," Dalén said.

Other predators sharing the landscape included wolves, cave hyenas, ⁠brown bears, cave bears and ⁠the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium. The powerful saber-toothed cat Smilodon was a more southern species, but may have come into contact with cave lions in the Yukon and Alaska regions during brief periods of Pleistocene climate warming.

The modern lion did not venture as far north as the cave lion's usual domain. But the study showed that the two species came into contact at particularly cold stretches of the Ice Age when growing continental ice sheets and expansion of the steppe tundra brought cave lions southward, causing their ranges to overlap.

"Climate appears to dictate the level of interbreeding that we see between these species," Stanton said.

The researchers said this interbreeding may have occurred in places like modern-day Iran. That region once was home to a sizable population of modern lions, though they are now largely restricted to Africa.

The warming at the end of the Ice Age contributed to the extinctions of many of the large Pleistocene animals, or megafauna, with human hunting presenting another destabilizing factor.

"Cave lions, like the rest of the megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene, were under a huge amount of pressure due to rapid changes in climate combined with increasing human population densities. The extinction of cave lions falls into the general pattern that we see of mass extinction of megafauna at this time, but for reasons that we don't completely understand," Stanton said.