Famous Frog Toughie Dies, Sending Species to Extinction

7 years ago | Posted in: science | 885 Views

Toughie, the world’s last Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog and a symbol of the extinction crisis, has died at his home in the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

The famed frog’s age is unknown, but he’s at least 12 years old, and likely older, because he was an adult when collected in 2005.

Mark Mandica, who worked with Toughie for seven years, says the frog’s story isn’t entirely unique. “A lot of attention had been paid to him in captivity, so he even has his own Wikipedia page,” Mandica, head of the Amphibian Foundation, notes. “But there are plenty of other species out there that are disappearing, sometimes before we even knew that they were there.”

In fact, Toughie’s own species (Ecnomiohyla rabborum) wasn’t described until 2008, a few years after Toughie was found during a 2005 frog rescue mission by the Atlanta Botanical Garden and Zoo Atlanta. He was one of many frogs scientists raced to collect as the deadly chytrid fungus closed in on central Panama… see more

source: National Geographic News

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