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Environment/Nature | February 8, 2011 [ 19:24 ]

Denver Zoo helps to save Peru's endangered Lake Titicaca frog

By John Platt for Scientific American

A small success is being hailed as a big step forward for conservation efforts to protect the world's largest aquatic frog, the critically endangered Lake Titicaca frog (Telmatobius culeus). For the first time, frogs in captivity in their native country of Peru have laid fertile eggs, and although the resulting tadpoles did not survive, scientists trying to save the species have now overcome a "major obstacle," says Tom Weaver, area supervisor at the Denver Zoo, which is assisting with the project.

The frogs had only spawned in captivity previously at the Bronx Zoo in the 1970s, where the few tadpoles produced also died. That zoo's adult specimens died out in the 1990s.

Biologically unique, the Lake Titicaca frog is covered by loose folds of skin that allow it to breathe indefinitely underwater by absorbing oxygen from the water. Found only in the vicinity of South America's largest lake, straddling the Peru–Bolivia border, the species has seen its population drop precipitously since it was first brought to the world's attention by a Jacques Cousteau documentary in 1971. The frog, which at full size weighs nearly a kilogram and measures more than 50 centimeters, was listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 2004 after scientists observed an estimated 80 percent drop in frog counts over its last three generations.

Like most endangered species, threats to the Lake Titicaca frog include habitat loss and pollution. But the worst threat has been overharvesting of the frog for so-called medicinal purposes to "cure" all manner of diseases and enhance male virility. Unlike traditional Chinese medicine, "this is relatively new to their culture," Weaver says. "There was a doctor in the 1950s who was recommending that frogs were good for treating TB." Now frogs are consumed, usually after being turned dropped into a blender and turned into what the locals call "frog soup."

Read the whole article published in Scientific American.

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