EnvironmentClimate ChangeEnvironmentConservation

Tiny Frog Last Seen In 1962 Found In The Mountains Of Zimbabwe

Scientists were thrilled to find the inch-long "cave squeaker" alive and well.
Open Image Modal
By 

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

Francois Becker knows his frog calls ― and he knows them well. But in early December, while conducting research near the summit of a remote mountain in eastern Zimbabwe, the ecologist heard a call he could not quite place.

“When I first heard [it], I thought it might be an insect,” Becker, a graduate student at the University of Cape Town, told The Huffington Post over email on Monday. “It was a soft, high-pitched whistle repeated several times.” 

But as he got closer to the sound, Becker determined that it wasn’t an insect at all. “The ‘texture’ of the call, for lack of a better word, confirmed that it was probably a frog,” he said. Specifically, a kind of Arthroleptis frog. 

Arthroleptis is a genus of frogs endemic to tropical sub-Saharan Africa. They’re known for their high-pitched whistling calls and tiny stature (the largest species of the genus, Arthroleptis tanneri, grows to just two inches long). They are also direct breeders, meaning they ― unlike most other frogs — are born as fully formed froglets and not as tadpoles.

“Francois had done a great deal of work on [Arthroleptis frogs] in South Africa, and had paid particular attention to their calls,” Becker’s research colleague, Robert Hopkins, told The Zimbabwean in an interview last month. “He heard a call which he recognized as that of an Arthroleptis, but did not or could not identify it, so he tracked that call and ultimately found the first specimen.”

The source of the unusual whistle turned out to be an unimaginable treasure: a rare cave-dwelling frog that had not been seen in over 50 years. 

This is Arthroleptis troglodytes, also known as a “cave squeaker.” Becker took the first photos of the species ever.

Open Image Modal
This is one of the cave squeakers that Francois Becker and his team found in December. A photo of a reddish-brown frog that's been circulating this week does not show a cave squeaker, but a different species, Becker said on Monday.
Francois Becker

The cave squeaker was last spotted in the rocky Chimanimani mountains of eastern Zimbabwe in 1962, the year it was first discovered. The minuscule animal measures no more than an inch long, and scientists assumed it was extinct after several unsuccessful searches, including a 2010 expedition.

Hopkins, a 75-year-old researcher with Zimbabwe’s Natural History Museum, had been searching for the frog since 1998, to no avail.

In a last-ditch attempt to find the elusive animal, he applied for a grant from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund last year to conduct another search. He roped in Becker and a Zimbabwean entomologist named Scott Herbst. In December, the group headed to the mountains of Chimanimani, the only place the frog was known to exist.  

Hopkins, who has cancer, was not able to participate in the search effort due to his age and illness, he explained in a research report. So he was in Chimanimani village on Dec. 2 when he received a phone call from a “very excited” Becker. 

“[H]e had located an Arthroleptis troglodytes,” wrote Hopkins in the report. “It was great surprise and release after all these years.”

Open Image Modal
A cave squeaker. According to Hopkins, the tiny frog grows to no more than an inch long.
Francois Becker

Remarkably, Becker didn’t just find one lonesome cave squeaker that day, but several. 

He said it had taken him about 45 minutes to track down the first frog after hearing its call. “I was so excited when I saw it that my hands were shaking, and I let it slip away,” he recalled. “It hopped into a deep crevice and I could no longer see it. However, by this time I had recorded the call and was playing it back to them, to prompt other nearby males to start calling. It took me about another 40 minutes to find the next one.”

Becker and his team, which also included two local guides, collected three males and one female that day. 

Hopkins said they gathered a “great deal of data,” including DNA samples that have been sent for analysis. Hopkins said the cave squeakers appear to be “breeding well” in the Chimanimani mountains.

“There seems to be a very viable population,” he wrote in the report. The exact number of frogs, however, remains unknown.

Open Image Modal
Cave squeakers have brown mottled skin with spots.
Francois Becker

Scientists are now considering conservation strategies for the frog species. Hopkins told The Zimbabwean that he, together with the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, are mulling over the possibility of breeding cave squeakers in his laboratory and releasing them back into the wild.

Hopkins worries that the recent discovery will prompt people to illegally capture and export cave squeakers from Chimanimani. A Parks Authority spokeswoman told The Associated Press this week that experts are devising a management plan to protect the animal. 

“We are expecting an influx of scientists looking for it,” said Caroline Washaya-Moyo. “We will do everything in our power to protect and conserve the frog.”

Amphibians, including frogs, are one of the most threatened groups of animals on the planet. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, about 1 in 3 amphibians face the threat of extinction. Climate change, habitat destruction and disease are some of the greatest threats facing frogs and other amphibians. 

A 2011 study found that amphibians may not be evolving fast enough to deal with the “enormous” human-induced changes to the environment over the past 100 years. 

“With a permeable skin and exposure to both aquatic and terrestrial problems, amphibians face a double whammy,” zoologist Andrew Blaustein, co-author of the study, told LiveScience at the time. “Because of this, mammals, fish and birds have not [yet] experienced population impacts as severely as amphibians.” 

______

Dominique Mosbergen is a reporter at The Huffington Post covering climate change, extreme weather and extinction. Send tips or feedback to dominique.mosbergen@huffingtonpost.com or follow her on Twitter. 

Support HuffPost

At HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.

Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.

Would you join us to help keep our stories free for all? Your will go a long way.

Support HuffPost

Before You Go

Humans Saved These 6 Animals From Extinction
Channel Islands Fox(01 of06)
Open Image Modal
These tiny foxes endemic to Channel Islands National Park, a chain of islands off the coast of California, faced a “catastrophic” decline in the late 1990s. Populations of the fox, which is no larger than a house cat, had plummeted more than 90 percent on four of the six islands. On Santa Cruz Island, where 1,400 foxes had once lived, fewer than 55 remained. The population on Santa Rosa Island had dropped from 1,780 to just 15.

Golden eagles were the primary threat facing the small mammals, scientists said. The birds were not native to the islands and had only started frequenting the area in the 1990s after use of the pesticide DDT wiped out the larger, native bald eagles.

“Golden eagle predation was unprecedented, and was considered unnatural because golden eagles had not previously bred on the islands and were, until this time, rarely observed,” the National Park Service explained on its website. “With the golden eagle’s sharp talons, swiftness of flight, and four times the body mass of a fox, they easily preyed upon the vulnerable fox.”

The imperiled creature was added to the endangered species list in 2004 -- a move that sparked an enormous, concerted effort to save the animal from the brink.

Empowered and galvanized by the Endangered Species Act, at least 300 scientists and conservation experts, nonprofit organizations, and state and federal agencies joined forces to initiate conservation measures, including captive breeding and golden eagle relocation programs. The hard work ultimately paid off.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in December that fox populations on the islands of San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz had “fully recovered,” while the fourth subspecies under threat, the Santa Catalina Island fox, had been “downlisted from endangered to threatened.”

“It’s remarkable to think that in 2004, these foxes were given a 50 percent chance of going extinct in the next decade. Yet here we are today, declaring three of the four subspecies recovered and the fourth on its way,” former Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said in a statement. “That’s the power of the [Endangered Species Act] — not just to protect rare animals and plants on paper, but to drive focused conservation that gets dramatic results.” (credit:Stephen Osman/Getty Images)
Kakapo(02 of06)
Open Image Modal
The kakapo is a remarkable bird. The large parrot has lived in New Zealand for millions of years, and is evolutionarily unique. It has no close living relatives, is world's the only nocturnal flightless parrot, and scientists believe it can live for up to 90 years.

The birds also have extremely unusual mating habits: The males inflate like balloons and emit a repetitive “heartbeat-like” sound (known as “booms”) in an effort to attract a mate, and the females only become interested in mating when a particular native tree, called the rimu, bears fruit -- something that happens every two to four years.

“They’re just weird and wacky. They’re extremely different from any other bird,” Digby, a science adviser at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, told The Huffington Post. “If we lose them, we’d be left with nothing even similar.”

Losing the kakapo almost became a reality a few decades ago. Kakapo populations plummeted to nearly zero in the 1970s, due to humans hunting them and introducing new predators including dogs and cats.

“Kakapo used to be extremely common in New Zealand. They used to be absolutely everywhere,” Digby said. “European explorers used to describe shaking trees and kakapo just falling out of them.” (The bird may not be very good at flying, but tree-climbing is one of its noted skills.)

When conservationists surveyed for the bird in the late 1970s, they only found a handful of them, and all of them were males. The bird was assumed to be functionally extinct.

But then in 1980, researchers made an extraordinary discovery: four females on an island off the southern coast of New Zealand. The birds were promptly relocated to a special pest- and predator-free island, and the government initiated several measures to protect the parrots. In 1990, the New Zealand Department of Conservation established the Kakapo Recovery Group and launched an intensive program to monitor the birds 24/7. Chicks were hand-reared, and researchers undertook extensive study of the kakapo and its behavior.

“It’s been a big, big effort,” Digby said.

The kakapo is now on the road to recovery. Today, 154 birds live on three predator-free islands and in sanctuaries that are devoid of non-native mammals, insects and plants. A successful 2016 breeding season yielded a more than 20 percent increase in the kakapo population.

Digby credits the New Zealand government’s commitment to conservation as a major factor in the bird’s recovery. “In conservation, there’s always a battle for funding," he said. "But we’re lucky that there’s quite a lot of emphasis here. The government support has been incredible."

The Kakapo Recovery Group hopes that two of the three populations of kakapo, which are still considered critically endangered, will be self-sustaining in a few years. The ultimate goal, the group says, is to get the parrot back onto the mainland.

“We once thought it was a crazy idea,” Digby said. “But the New Zealand government has been talking about making the mainland predator-free by 2050. It could really happen.” (credit:Andrew Digby/New Zealand Dept of Conservation)
Amur Tiger(03 of06)
Open Image Modal
Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers, once roamed the Korean peninsula. Medieval portraits from the region prominently feature the big cat, some of them showing hunters confronting the sharp-toothed predator. Even just a century ago, the peninsula’s “southern islands were filled with lots of Siberian tigers,” said Professor Lee Hang of Seoul National University in a 2012 press release discussing the animal’s history in the region.

But the Amur tiger has not been spotted in South Korea for decades. Centuries of hunting and habitat destruction are believed to have driven the animal to extinction in the country in the early- to mid-1900s. (The animal’s status in North Korea is unknown.)

And it hasn’t just been Korea’s Amur tigers that have been under threat. While the big cat was once found in abundance in parts of Russia and China, hunting and other human activities drove the subspecies to the brink of extinction across its entire range. In the 1940s, only about 40 Amur tigers are believed to have existed in the wild. Extinction seemed imminent.

But thanks to interventions by the Russian and Chinese governments, as well as the action and activism of conservation groups, the Amur tiger has made a “spectacular comeback” over the past 50 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Anti-poaching programs have been introduced to protect the animal in Russia, while China has stopped logging in the region where tigers roam. China also banned civilian gun ownership in the 1990s, which reduced the threat of hunters.

In 2008, the IUCN upgraded the tigers’ listing from critically endangered to endangered. Today, approximately 400 Amur tigers live in the wild, mostly inhabiting the forests of eastern Russia. Tiger numbers are increasing in northeast China as well, conservationists say.

Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping approved a plan to establish a 6,000-square mile national park dedicated to protecting Amur tigers and leopards.

“The commitment of the Chinese government is a landmark event for the recovery of tigers,” Dale Miquelle, director of the Russia program at the Wildlife Conservation Society and tiger expert, told HuffPost in email last month. “There appears to be a great opportunity for a dramatic recovery of tigers in northeast China.”

But for all the good news, the Amur tiger still faces daunting risks.

“Poaching is still the main short-term threat to tigers — in both Russia and China (and the rest of Asia), while long-term, destruction of habitat is of critical concern. Both need to be controlled for tigers to survive,” Miquelle wrote. “Punishment for killing endangered species in Russia has recently greatly increased, [but so] have loopholes that allow poachers to escape conviction. In China, the demand for tigers parts, and the belief that these parts are powerful medicine, is the ultimate driver of poaching, and also has to be addressed.”

“With the economic boom, and human population growth of Asia, the dangers are still great, and constant vigilance and action is desperately still needed,” he added. (credit:Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)
Mountain Gorilla(04 of06)
Open Image Modal
Scientists only discovered the mountain gorilla, an inhabitant of the forested volcanoes of central Africa, when a German explorer encountered — and promptly shot dead — two members of this subspecies in 1902.

This macabre first meeting was a harbinger of things to come. Poaching, habitat destruction and other human impacts decimated mountain gorilla populations. As war and conflict raged in the region in the 1970s, fewer than 300 of the animals were believed to remain on the planet.

“There were fears that the mountain gorilla would become extinct in the same century it was discovered,” said Bas Huijbregts, African species manager at the World Wildlife Fund.

But conservationists, with government support, worked for decades to ensure that didn’t happen. Today, at least 880 of the subspecies can be found in central Africa, nearly half of them in the Virunga Mountains, which extend along the borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Their numbers are rising slowly but steadily, according to Peter Zahler, Asia Regional Director of the WCS.

“While the total numbers in [mountain gorilla] recovery may not be breathtaking, the fact that they still exist, much less are increasing, is a real example of a conservation success story against all the odds,” Zahler said.

Conservation groups like the WWF and the WCS have played an important role in protecting the great ape over the decades, from working with national governments to improve land use planning and combat habitat loss, to providing equipment for local law enforcement to aid in anti-poaching efforts.

In 2015, activists celebrated a “major milestone” for mountain gorillas when Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC signed a treaty that committed the three nations to protecting the biodiversity of the Virunga Mountains and gorilla conservation specifically.

“Ownership by governments and local communities of their species is the key to success [in conservation],” Huijbregts told HuffPost.

Persistence is also essential, he added: “Keep trying, and never leave.”

In its latest assessment in 2016, the IUCN said the mountain gorilla was recovering but still faced many threats, including continued poaching and civil unrest in parts of the species’ geographic range. The animal is still listed as critically endangered. (credit:Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)
Markhor(05 of06)
Open Image Modal
The markhor’s tremendously large, spiraled horns are considered some of the most beautiful in nature. But those famed horns have also contributed significantly to the mountain goat’s decline.

The goat is native to western Asia, and uncontrolled hunting for its horns -- which are used for decorative purposes and also in Chinese traditional medicine -- has drastically reduced its population. In Pakistan, for example, markhor numbers fell by about 70 percent in the 20th century. In Tajikistan, once home to an abundance of the species, fewer than 350 were counted in the mid-1990s.

It was ultimately the work of local communities across the markhor’s range that helped turn around the animal’s fortunes.

In Pakistan, where the markhor is the national animal, local conservation groups and the WCS have partnered to protect the goat’s remaining habitat. They have trained local citizens to serve as rangers and help prevent poaching and other violations of national natural resource laws.

Experts say the markhor’s prominence may have helped its recovery. “The species represents a national icon and cultural pride likely played into the dedication with which citizens sought to prevent its extinction,” said the Ecology Global Network.

The international trophy hunting market has also acted as an incentive in some local communities, according to the WCS’s Zahler. A single trophy male can cost over $50,000, and in Pakistan, 80 percent of that money is, by law, given to local communities. Although regulated trophy hunting as a conservation measure is a controversial and hotly debated issue, the practice appears to have reduced local hunting of markhor, at least in Pakistan, Zahler said.

Pakistan’s efforts have inspired citizens in neighboring Tajikistan as well. A 2014 story in National Geographic described how traditional Tajik hunters had put down their hunting weapons to protect the goat instead.

"Rangers from these communities risk their lives to protect these animals because they know that if they can sustain healthy populations of markhor, they can eventually see the rewards through some limited sustainable use of the species,” the magazine wrote. “And we are not just talking about financial rewards, but also about the deserved recognition that these local communities would like to achieve for conserving species that the world cares about."

Markhor populations have increased to over 1,000 in Tajikistan, according to a 2013 study. Some parts of Pakistan have had a population increase of more than 50 percent since 1999. As a result, the IUCN downgraded the markhor’s listing from “endangered” to “near threatened” in 2015. (credit:Getty Images)
Galapagos Giant Tortoise(06 of06)
Open Image Modal
On June 24, 2012, the world mourned the death of Lonesome George, the world’s last surviving Pinta Island tortoise. George, who was estimated to be about 100 years old, had lived at the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos Islands for decades under the watchful eye of scientists and conservation experts. His caretakers had tried for years to get the giant tortoise to find a mate, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

Though Galapagos conservationists weren’t able to save the Pinta Island tortoise, they have achieved tremendous success over the past 50 years in the recovery of other giant tortoise species in the archipelago.

In the late 1950s, researchers discovered that only 11 of 14 original giant tortoise populations in the Galapagos still existed. Almost all of these populations were endangered, they found, with most on the brink of extinction.

In the two centuries prior, sailors, pirates and merchantmen had killed between 100,000 and 200,000 giant tortoises on the islands, and introduced predators like black rats. On the island of Pinzon, for example, scientists found more than 100 tortoises — but all of them were very old. Black rats had been wiping out all the eggs and hatchlings for decades, leaving only the large, older tortoises. The adults would have eventually died out, too, if conservationists hadn't intervened, said Linda Cayot, science adviser to the Galapagos Conservancy.

Today, an estimated 500 giant tortoises live on Pinzon island, thanks to tortoise-rearing programs and predator eradication campaigns. Similar conservation efforts across the archipelago have raised the total population of giant tortoises in the Galapagos to over 15,000.

“It’s definitely been a team effort between the Ecuadorian government and conservation organizations and scientists too,” Cayot told HuffPost.

Cayot, who has spent 35 years working with Galapagos tortoises, said rescuing the animals from the brink has been a challenging but “super satisfying” experience.

“When it comes to conservation, my personal feeling is you never give up,” she said. “If you give up on one [species], then why not give up on all of them and just say the world is going to hell?” (credit:AFP/Getty Images)
Suggest a correction
|
Submit a tip