March 14, 2008
Bullfrog Ballet - among best videos so far in the year of the frog
Posted by pleasecroak under Year of the Frog, Zoo | Tags: Amphibian Ark, Year of the Frog, amphibians, frogs, bullfrog |
Kudos to Vancouver Aquarium for this beautiful, amazing video. Great to see how zoos and aquariums are backing The Year of The Frog and Amphibian Ark.
March 14, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Good luck frog people. Love your program and the cause. Keep bringing the hope for the amphibians.
March 16, 2008 at 7:33 am
The following Globe and Mail article is delightful. Will our frogs still be geting the “red carpet” treatment a year later?
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A first-class trip to escape extinction
When four rare frogs had to be brought to the Vancouver Aquarium, they did it in style
UNNATI GANDHI
From Friday’s Globe and Mail
March 14, 2008 at 4:29 AM EDT
VANCOUVER — Four endangered frogs have joined the ranks of celebrities, business executives and the political elite by hopping a high-end corporate jet in a frantic but first-class bid to be saved from extinction.
The tiny, spindly legged Panamanian golden frogs, or Atelopus zeteki, needed to get from the Toronto Zoo to the Vancouver Aquarium late last month so they could be bred with their West Coast counterparts. The species is already presumed extinct in the wild, according to experts, and only a few dozen are believed to be left in the care of humans.
But there was one logistical problem.
The tropical amphibians didn’t have much chance on a five-hour commercial flight - there was a high probability they would freeze to death on the tarmac in Toronto while waiting to be loaded onto the plane.
Deeming that too risky, John Nightingale, president of the Vancouver Aquarium, on a whim called Wynne Powell, president of London Air Services and an old acquaintance from their days on the Vancouver Board of Trade, and asked for help.
“John phoned me that night and said, ‘I’ve got to move some frogs,’ ” Mr. Powell recalled. The company donated the use of one of its corporate jets.
And so on Feb. 29 - fittingly, leap day - the frogs boarded a luxury Bombardier Learjet 45 XR in a wooden container. They were strapped into one of the jet’s eight leather executive seats, directly behind Brandt Louie, president and CEO of H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd. (London Air’s parent company).
“They were actually quite civil,” Mr. Louie said yesterday. “They didn’t make a sound.”
The frogs are now thriving at the Vancouver Aquarium, Mr. Nightingale said, where they are on display as part of the new Frogs Forever? exhibit.
The corporate goodwill flight was a small but welcome gesture in helping the overall international effort to save thousands of species of frogs, Mr. Nightingale said.
Frog populations have been declining rapidly since the 1960s, when doctors switched to frogs from rabbits in now-outmoded human pregnancy tests, he said.
At the time, South African clawed frogs, who specialists didn’t know were carrying the deadly chytrid fungus, were transported to countries around the world. The fungus spread quickly, and has already wiped out several species. It is expected to make another 2,000 species extinct within the next decade.
“If we lose even a thousand species of frogs in the next 10 years, that’s the biggest extinction since the dinosaurs, all because nobody knew there was a fungus attached to these medical frogs back in the sixties and seventies,” Mr. Nightingale said.
Zoos and aquariums internationally have banded together to take between 500 to 1,000 species into their care and breed them for at least 20 years until the fungus ages out of the environment, he said.
The Panamanian golden frog is one of the species under the care of the Vancouver Aquarium. They exist only at the Toronto Zoo, the St. Louis Zoo, a reserve centre in Panama, and now, Vancouver, Mr. Nightingale said.
“You can get inbreeding fairly fast, so to maintain genetic diversity, we’ll need to mail them back and forth to Toronto and St. Louis,” he said.
The aquarium is hoping to work with London Air for future frog flights. London Air’s Mr. Powell said there has even been talk of painting a giant frog on the side of the Learjet - and dubbing it the Frog-Mobile.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080314.wbcfrogs14/BNStory/Science/
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I saw the Vancouver Aquarium exhibit a couple days ago. Very nice. Many people were caught looking for the now extinct golden toad and felt sheepish when they realized the exhibit terrarium was empty. Though the Panamanian Golden Frogs were putting on a real show for the folks that day. The native Red-Legged Frog was missing from the exhibit!
March 16, 2008 at 11:56 am
fantastic! The accompanying music is great! Hooray for the Year of the Frog!
March 16, 2008 at 11:59 am
How can I get a copy?
March 16, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Arnold, I don’t know the answer on how to get a copy of this video, other than to suggest you reach out the Vancouver Zoo. Good luck.