An Unexpected Ambassador: The Journey of the Lake Titicaca Frog
By McKenzie Paine
A Lake Titicaca water frog sits in its habitat at Denver Zoo. Photo by McKenzie Paine.
On a quiet, unassuming late December day, not long after the controlled chaos that is Finals Week had ended, animal care staff at Colorado State University were themselves abuzz with a sense of anticipation and duty.
Nine new visitors were arriving, and they would soon be under the staff’s care.
But this wasn’t just any new animal; they were part of a critically endangered species, a miniscule—yet increasingly important—fraction of the species’ dwindling population. These new visitors were Lake Titicaca water frogs, indigenous to just one lake—their namesake—high in the Andes mountains of Peru.
While it isn’t the only critically endangered species that is part of the animal collection at Colorado State, it is arguably the most unique. From its physiology to its natural habitat, the Lake Titicaca frog stands out among the other taxa in the school’s Biology building.
This story isn’t just about these nine frogs at a state university in Colorado—rather, it’s about how they got there. It’s a tale of a remarkable journey, spanning more than 4,000 miles and the better part of a decade; a story in which this large, odd-looking frog has become a symbol of survival and an unexpected ambassador in the fight to save amphibians all over the world.
A Lake Titicaca frog looks into the camera through its tank at Chester Zoo, United Kingdom.
Photo courtesy Chester Zoo.
LAKE TITICACA: A DYING HOME
Nestled high in the Andes mountain range of South America is Lake Titicaca, a freshwater lake described by some as the highest navigable lake in the world. With an elevation of 12,507 feet, the lake—which bestrides a portion of the border between Bolivia and Peru—has very cold water temperatures, averaging between 50-57 degrees most of the year.
Such an environment is generally difficult for most cold-blooded animals—known scientifically as ectotherms—because they draw their heat from the environment they are in. Humans, in comparison, are endotherms, meaning we regulate our own body temperature, giving us more flexibility in terms of the habitats we can occupy.
“They’ve adapted to live at a very, very high altitude,” says Derek Cossaboon, an amphibian keeper at Denver Zoo. “When you don’t produce your own body heat, that presents all kinds of different challenges.”
Despite the tough climate, the Lake Titicaca water frog had, until relatively recently, managed to thrive. As has been the case with thousands upon thousands of species in the last century, a number of causes have compounded one another to push the Lake Titicaca water frog to the brink of extinction, including pollution and over-harvesting.
One such threat to the species is consumption. The frog is seen by some locals as having medicinal qualities and is often consumed in the form of a blended drink called “rana y maca,” referring to the elixir’s two main ingredients: rana, Spanish for frog, and maca root. The drink is said to enhance sexual performance and mental clarity, among other things.
Tom Weaver, the assistant curator of amphibians and fish at Denver Zoo, says that while the consumption of the frog isn’t the main threat to its survival, it is still an issue that warrants mitigation.
“I’m not going to tell them they can’t consume their own animals,” Weaver said. “But what they are doing is consuming a critically endangered species and they don’t even really know it.”
Perhaps the largest threat to the frogs, however, comes from something much larger in scale. Often referred to as a “global amphibian crisis,” amphibian species across the world are facing extreme losses to their populations, primarily due to climate-induced losses of habitat as well as a fungus called chytrid. The fungus is thought to be at least partly responsible for massive declines in amphibian populations around the world.
“We’re losing probably 30 to 40 percent of all of our amphibians within the next 50 to 100 years,” according to Weaver. “These amphibian species can’t adapt to it, at least not with all the other threats to them.”
In response, Weaver and his colleagues at Denver Zoo decided to step in and try to help. In 2007, Weaver visited Peru for the first time, and from there a massive campaign was launched to try to save the frog. The zoo worked closely with local leaders to try to educate locals and study the frog to try to determine ways to mitigate some of the threats.
Weaver knew, however, that they were facing an uphill battle.
“They’ve probably dropped 80 percent in their population size within the last 50 years,” Weaver noted.
The clock was ticking for the Lake Titicaca frogs, despite everyone’s best efforts to save them.
Several Lake Titicaca frogs on exhibit at Denver Zoo. Photo by McKenzie Paine.
THE LEAP TO A NEW CONTINENT
For the next several years, the Denver Zoo—along with the Peruvian government, as well local researchers—worked tirelessly to try to, at the very least, stabilize the population. But as their efforts came up fruitless, Weaver and his colleagues began to realize more needed to be done.
Weaver began the arduous task of attempting to have some frogs sent back to Denver, where a new population could be established in managed care at the zoo. Because the frog is listed as critically endangered, however, the task proved cumbersome, to say the least.
But then, there came a breakthrough. Officials in Lima confiscated a large number of frogs from a local street market, where they were slated for consumption. In the time following their confiscation, some of the frogs mated, producing a clutch of offspring. Officials needed to decide what to do with the growing number of frogs now in their care.
While the obvious choice may have been to release the frogs back into the wild, there were complications.
“They weren’t really sure exactly where these particular frogs came from,” explains Jennifer Brady, a master’s candidate at Colorado State University. “Not knowing what population these frogs belonged to creates a lot of problems for reintroduction.”
Because of the geography of Lake Titicaca, it is believed that there may be separate populations of the frog on the Peruvian and Bolivian sides of the lake. With no way to know for sure which side of the lake the frogs came from, and no certainty that the frogs from each side and genetically identical, the risk of altering the natural course of evolution for the frogs was high.
Brady, whose master’s research focused specifically on the Lake Titicaca frog, says that accidentally introducing separate populations together can be dangerous.
“You are at risk of disturbing the evolutionary course of a population, which has specific adaptations for the local environment,” Brady said. “We don’t want to destabilize the already fragile existence these frogs have.”
With no option to reintroduce the frogs, Weaver and his colleagues saw an opportunity to help. They began working with officials in Peru to transfer twenty of the offspring to Denver to serve as a showcase of the zoo’s international work and to help explain the crisis facing amphibians to the general public.
Several compounding factors made transferring the frogs across international borders complicated, including the fact that the species is listed in Appendix 1 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), severely limiting its movement from country to country. In addition, the chytrid fungus had also been seen at Lake Titicaca, meaning extensive testing and quarantine planning needed to be done first in order to prevent the spread of the fungus to other places, not the least of which was Denver Zoo’s existing amphibian population.
The process proved challenging, but after several years of discussion and paperwork, the Peruvian government gave the Denver Zoo permission to take the frogs. In 2015, this small group of frogs began their 4,000-mile journey to North America, the first population of its kind in the U.S. in decades.
Weaver and his colleagues could not have known then just how successful this group of frogs would be in their new home.
Podcast interview with Denver Zoo's Tom Weaver about the Lake Titicaca Frog's
journey to Denver.
journey to Denver.
Several visitors view the Lake Titicaca frogs in their exhibit at Denver Zoo. Photo by McKenzie Paine.
THRIVING IN THEIR NEW HOME
By the time Denver Zoo staff accepted shipment of the Lake Titicaca frogs in 2016, their counterparts in Peru had already been keeping them in managed care for some time, meaning some of the kinks in keeping the frogs had, for the most part, been worked out. Even so, caring for such a unique species proved difficult for zoo staff.
“It was definitely a little bit more challenging in that we didn’t have didn’t really have many resources to reference,” Cossaboon explained. “When you’re the first to do something, it’s a learning process from beginning to end.”
Keepers at Denver Zoo had been operating under the assumption the frogs would need close care and supervision for their survival. That assumption was shattered, however, once the frogs had settled in.
On Valentine’s Day in 2017, the first clutch of eggs laid at Denver Zoo hatched, making Denver Zoo the first zoo on the North American continent to successfully breed the frogs in managed care. Despite the large size of the clutch, keepers weren’t initially concerned with the number of tadpoles they suddenly had on their hands.
“Not knowing what kind of losses we would have from our first clutch ever being produced in captivity, we did not cull any eggs,” Cossaboon said.
That decision would end up being a major boon for the young frogs and would change the course of their journey forever.
“We didn’t realize that we would have virtually zero mortality,” Cossaboon recalled with a chuckle. “We did end up with probably several hundred frogs.”
Four hundred frogs, in fact. Their numbers had increased so much that keepers quickly realized they would need to start finding other homes for their rapidly-growing population of frogs.
“Having those numbers enabled us to send them to numerous zoos throughout the country,” Cossaboon said.
Colorado State University zoo management master’s candidate and aquatics technician Jennifer Brady discusses the physiology of the Lake Titicaca frogs with visitors to their habitat in the university’s Biology building. Photo by McKenzie Paine.
BECOMING AN UNEXPECTED AMBASSADOR
What started as a small population of frogs meant to quietly promote Denver Zoo’s conservation programs had grown into a large group of water-bound ambassadors spreading their story to zoos across the country. In just two short years, the Lake Titicaca frog has now found its way to at least ten institutions across the country, including the nine frogs who now call Colorado State University home.
Additionally, just this year, 150 frogs made their way across an even larger “pond,” landing—with human assistance, of course—at Chester Zoo in the United Kingdom, where they will eventually be distributed to other zoos in Europe and continue spreading awareness of the amphibian crisis around the world.
“It’s spreading that awareness,” Weaver added. “That story is going to all the places that have [the frogs].”
While seeing the frogs themselves helps to spread awareness of their plight, their story isn’t just spreading at their new destinations. The beginnings of this pilgrimage—the communities of Peru—have also seen some rather large changes, all because of the journey of a rather small creature.
Denver Zoo has been working tirelessly to educate the Peruvian public on the story of the Lake Titicaca frog and the crisis it is facing. They even employed the use of a frog mascot, affectionately named “Telma” after the frog’s scientific name, Telmatobius culeus. The mascot, by all accounts, has been a resounding success in teaching locals about the effects their actions have on the frog’s fragile population.
“I started seeing the effects of this suit, it turned into a celebrity,” Weaver said, speaking of the first time he had been tasked with bringing the costume to Peru.
“Kids would come to these events and Telma would be there and then the story would get out about these frogs and the ecosystem,” Weaver added. “Now they’re recognizing that there is an issue with the lake, they’re telling their parents and their parents are listening to them.”
Denver Zoo has also gone so far as to begin selling products made by locals in their souvenir shop at the zoo as to help mitigate income lost from no longer harvesting the frogs for consumption. Money raised from the sale of such items goes directly to those who made them back in Peru.
For a simple, but unique, frog, found deep in the waters of just one lake in the entire world, their impact on the larger discussion around conservation has been enormous. Stories like that of the Lake Titicaca frog might just make the difference in the fight to save species all over the world.
“We of course have a lot of good exhibits and a lot of good ways for the public to see our animals,” Cossaboon said. “But I don’t think the general public is aware of how much hands-on conservation is going on around the world.”
“It’s a good message, the frogs have been a good way to get that message out there.”