Owing to global heating and other forms of global change, migration and long-distance dispersal will be central to the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning during the present century. Yet our understanding of whether or not plants can disperse fast enough, and how, is limited. Are we handicapped by the pervasive dominant paradigm that assumes the dispersal mechanism can be predicted from fruit/seed morphology, and that only fleshy-fruited plants are dispersed by vertebrates? We will consider whether non-frugivorous animals have a key role as dispersal vectors via “non-classical zoochory”, i.e. the plant dispersal by animals which is ignored by the current paradigm.