The Amphibian Avenger

Drinking frog frappe in downtown Lima

A rather toad-like Peruvian man displays his somewhat undersized aquatic scrotum for the camera before plunging them into a blender

I'm in Lima, Peru where in a couple of hours I'm meant to be catching a plane to Bogota. But instead of heading for the airport, I'm speeding recklessly in the opposite direction on a wild frog chase. Lima's traffic is notoriously bad and I really shouldn't be taking such a risk, but this frog and its story are so extraordinary I cannot miss it. Ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce Telmatobius culeus, Latin for aquatic scrotum and the key ingredient for Peruvian backstreet viagra. 

I first heard about this frog back in Uruguay. A well-connected conservationist I was staying with told me that a friend of his, Ramon "Kuki" Avellaneda, had seen frogs the size of VW's whilst diving for lost Inka gold with Jacques Cousteau at the bottom of Lake Titicaca. 

I was excited about the prospect of a giant crypto toad living at the bottom of a remote Andean lake. Pre-historic amphibians were monsters, several meters long that ate baby dinosaurs for breakfast. Perhaps Cousteau had discovered a relic beast - an amphibian Nessie at the bottom of this ancient lake. 

I contacted Kuki, who now basks amongst the beautiful near the swish sixties seaside resort of Buzios in Brazil. On account of being deaf as a post from his years underwater, we communicated via his son who relayed the somewhat disenchanting information that his father's aquatic scrotum were merely the size of dinner plates and not cars. I could barely hide my disappointment. But the story does not end there.

The super saggy Telmatobius delivers another of his saucy come hither looks for the camera 

Telmatobius Culeus it turns out may not be the behemoth ball bag of the deep but he is still an awesome beast. His laughable Latin name refers to his wrinkly appearance which has enabled him to pull the kind of trick that Houdini could only dream of. 

Lake Titicaca is an unforgiving home, at nearly 4000 metres above sea level, the sun is brutal, the air is thin and freezing cold. This is no place for an amphibian. But this frog survives by living permanently at the bottom of the lake, never surfacing and breathing only through his skin, which has evolved in copious folds that drape around his scrawny frame to maximise its surface area. When necessary, he does press ups to circulate more oxygenated water around his body. He may not be pretty, but it's an amazing evolutionary adaptation by anyone's standards.

An old woman I caught pushing frogs on a minor in Cuzco market

I spot my first Titicaca frog not in a lake, but in the markets of Cuzco in the Peruvian Andes. He's languishing in a bucket with other Telmatobius species waiting to become part of a soup that the locals believe is good for your brain, amongst other things. I'm thinking I've never heard anything so dumb but the locals have a long history of using this frog in traditional medicine so I'm probably not going to win this argument. Especially as I only know a few words in Spanish and shouting "bad frog" at the woman repeatedly will probably just get me arrested and forced to drink frog soup in a bid to cure my madness.

I struggle to see how anyone could feel sexy after drinking this 

I've heard that the Titcaca frogs, along with other Telmatobius species, are also the key ingredient of "frog juice" - an aphrodisiac sold in the food markets of the Peruvian capital. This traditional recipe sees the frogs placed in a blender along with a bunch of herbs and honey and drunk as a shake. How anything involving a Moulinex mixer can be described as traditional I don't know, but I do know I have to investigate. So during my change in flights at Lima I jump in a cab and head downtown in search of thisamphibian elixir. I made this short video about my frog juice drinking experience.

On the journey back to airport I explain to the cab driver that the frog in his favourite shake is now critically endangered, its numbers having declined by a whopping 80% in the last few generations. This ancient frog, a massive part of Andean culture, is on the brink of extinction thanks to people like him. I give him an extra big tip and tell him to go buy some Viagra. 

Conservationists on the Bolivian side of the lake are working hard to protect the frog, doing much needed outreach to educate local communities and working to uphold the law against it being sold in markets. But worryingly, recent dives have uncovered dozens of dead frogs - a sign that the dreaded Chytrid fungus may also have arrived at the frog's home. This frog needs all the help it can get.

You wouldn't like your balls put in a blender, so to help save the amazing aquatic scrotum and other endangered amphibians like them - please go here and donate some cash. 

The green cross toad

My most exotic adventure yet: to the end of the Piccadilly line to help a toad get laid. Not personally, of course. Despite the learing grin.

It's a chilly February afternoon when I get the text.

"The toads are on the move" 

Enigmatic it may be, but like some sort of amphibian secret agent I know exactly what it means. Along with a handful of other people across London I've been waiting for this missive for several weeks. The time has come for us to mobilise and put our training into practise. In a single message my Saturday night has morphed from a date with a nice chap in a cosy restaurant to one with a bewildered toad on a road in Cockfosters.

Who knew the British equivalent of the great Wildebeest migration across the Maasai Mara happens at the end of the Piccadilly line? But apparently it does. As soon as the thermometer strays above 5 degrees the toads of Trent park wake up, yawn and start thinking about sex. It’s time for them to make the mile long pilgrimage from their winter woodland hideaway to their ancestral pond. This they do en masse along an ancient migratory route; one that they've been following since before Henry IV first declared the park a Royal hunting ground back in the fifteenth century. Upon arrival the fun really begins. The Trent park toads are the ultimate suburban swingers and and embark upon the kind of orgy that would make even Charlie Sheen blush.

Toads are very fussy about where they breed. But this nondescript patch of water in North London is the equivalent of the Playboy mansion for the local toads and worth risking roads to get to.

It's a treacherous journey. Over the centuries the randy toads have had to dodge not just the pounding of Royal horses hooves but the boots of German officers interned in the park during its brief spell as an open prison during WWII. And now cars. An estimated 20 tonnes of toads get squished every year on Britain's roads making the location of the A111 beside the toad’s ancestral pond more of a menace than goose-stepping Nazis. Which is where I come in. I'm the latest volunteer for the local toad patrol and it's my job to ensure the Trent park toads get past the cars and get laid. Their future depends on it.

Andy has been watching toads copulate for almost twenty years

I'm excited about the prospect of witnessing such a spectacle. Although somewhat nervous about creeping around a park after dark. I'm loitering self-consciously at the entrance, scanning the road for toads when, thankfully, Andy arrives. Andy's been watching the Trent park toads for almost two decades. Worryingly he tells me the last few years haven't yielded the usual bumper crop.

"It used to be like an ocean of toads. So many you'd be scared to move for fear of treading on them. I had to have a word with the local running club. On the 'night of the toads' as I call it, they were trampling them to death"

We patrol the length of the road a few times. Nothing. Have the toads all fallen foul of jogging feet and speeding wheels? Thankfully Andy thinks it's nothing that sinister, just a bit too cold and dry for them to be feeling fruity just yet.

Then I spot a single male hopping about in the grass. I pick him up and he makes a sweet chirruping sound more like a bird than an amphibian. Toads get a bad rap and are generally associated with myths about warts and witchcraft. But this little guy is an essential link in the foodchain; the gardener's best friend he eats slugs and snails and in turn he provides otters and hedgehogs with a decent meal. It's true they do have certain magical qualities and have been known to predict earthquakes. Which makes them significantly smarter than pandas and far more deserving of our attention in my book.

I pop him down and he plops in the pond. Early to the party, I'm hoping he bags himself a choice female. Or two. One thing's for sure. He needs to father as many tadpoles as possible. It's not just joggers and cars these toads have to worry about. The killer fungal disease, Chytrid, has been detected in amphibian populations all around the UK. With numbers in decline by more than 50% over the last decade, Bufo Bufo, Britain's common toad is in serious danger of needing a new name.

"I'm into hanving sex, not into making love. Come give me a hug", Mr Toad channels 50 cent in order to keep the species going.

This spring the Zoological Society of London in association with ARG are assembling a voluntary Toad Task Force to swab 6000 amphibians across the UK for the deadly Chytrid. Amphibian research is woefully under funded compared to that of the so-called cute furry animals. To support this important work and help save Britain's brilliant toads donate a couple of quid here - they're so much more deserving than Pandas and better for your garden.

To join a local toad patrol visit Froglife here.

Frogs on the frontline

 
Alonso and I admire a glass frog in the Choco, Colombia where the greatest threat to the astonishing amphibian diversity is peace. Photo by Robin Moore

I’m looking for a lost frog. The Mesopotamian beaked toad to be precise. It’s been missing for almost a hundred years, which some might say is beyond careless. The last person to see it, an American biologist by the name of Gladwyn Noble, was also the first person to discover it. I’m wondering whether the fact it’s been mislaid for so long has anything to do with the curious, frankly misleading, name he gave it. It suggests I should be looking for this amphibian Mr Burns behind a sofa in Turkey as oppose to scrabbling through leaf litter, as I am, in the Colombian jungle.

The reality is this missing toad is just one of thousands of frogs vanishing off the planet. The world’s amphibians are in the grips of the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped out, with over a third of all species heading for the exit sign. In many cases this is happening quite suddenly and mysteriously. The chief suspect is a deadly fungus which is being aided and abetted by the holy trinity of environmental bogeymen: climate change, pollution and habitat loss.

Don't adjust your set: the Colombian rainforest is full of other-worldy amphibians like this purple treefrog with blue eyes

Colombia tops the charts for endangered species. The particular stories behind their disappearances, I’m about to discover, add a surreal twist to the already extraordinary global frog-icide. Our search for the beaked toad uncovers a topsy-turvy world of pharmaceutical frog-nappers, narco-terrorist pseudo-conservationists and German's with frogs up their bums. You couldn't make it up.

My quest begins in Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, where I join a crack team of top international herpetologists, who have been dispatched here to track down the elusive beaked toad, as part of the charity Conservation International’s global search for lost frogs. Over the next few months there will be expeditions in 18 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia to track down one hundred amphibians believed to be missing in action. Many are evolutionary oddities, distinct in their class, like the gastric brooding frog of Australia, which incubates its young in its stomach. Their loss is significant not just to nature but also to science. The hope is that this campaign will uncover secret populations still clinging on in pockets of wilderness that can then be conserved.  

‘Colombia is frog central,’ expedition leader Dr Robin Moore tells me. ‘With nearly eight hundred recorded species, it almost certainly has the highest diversity. Brazil officially has a few more but it’s seven times the size of Colombia and more thoroughly surveyed. The exciting thing about this country is that so much of it has yet to be explored’

 
Glass frog glasses, the latest fashion wow on the herp scene

At this point of the story I should probably come clean. Like the rest of Team Frog I’m also utterly obsessed with amphibians. I love their freaky metamorphic lifestyle; I love their idiosyncratic biology and I love their endless diversity. You can never get bored of frogs. I’m baffled by the tyranny of cute, which sees the so-called charismatic mega-fauna command the lion’s share of attention and conservation dollars. You’ve seen one baby panda, you’ve seen them all. And while the world drools over cuddly furry things a whole class of animals is being erased from the planet, throwing the rest of the food chain into a tailspin. It’s, quite frankly, froggist – and potentially disastrous.

I recently spent six months travelling around Latin America investigating the amphibian declines for a documentary. But I’ve been desperate to visit Colombia as it holds the best opportunity for me to fulfill my life’s ambition, the discovery of a new species. Stuff the Mesopotamian beaked toad, I’m on a secret mission to discover the Lucy frog and achieve amphibian immortality.

 All hail the hypno-toad; the New Granda cross banded treefrog has mesmerising qualities

Colombia’s geography reads like a biological explorer’s wish list; Amazon rainforest, tropical islands, vast savannas. It's got the lot. But it’s the tropical Andes that make it such a Darwinian machine - a contender for the most biodiverse place on earth.

Fellow frog hunter Dr Wes Sechrest of Global Wildlife Conservation tells me, ‘Everyone talks about saving the Amazon, which is of course important, but it’s largely homogenous. In terms of biodiversity these equatorial mountains are the real factories of evolution. But very little is being done to conserve them.’

Sunrise over life's most productive factories of evolution

Like islands in the sky, every mountain and valley has evolved its own set of unique species. But much of this biological treasure remains undiscovered. The cloud forests of the Andes have guerrillas in their mist: they are the hiding place for left wing rebel groups like the FARC whose reputation for kidnap, narco-trafficking and mass murder has understandably deterred all but the most dedicated biologists.

Which is why a mission like ours needs a political pilot. Ours is Alonso Quevedo, president of Pro Aves, Colombia’s biggest conservation organisation. He’s a taciturn chap with an arsenal of anecdotes more in keeping with a secret agent than a biologist.

‘To do conservation in this country you have to learn to live with the threat of guerrillas,’ he states matter-of-factly. ‘The FARC often chose to hide out in the thickest forest, so we’re both interested in the same areas’. 

   
Me and the Colombian wing of Team Frog AKA biologists with balls

It clearly takes sizeable cojones to risk fieldwork in this country. A wrong move could cost you your life. Alonso’s colleague Juan had a near death experience whilst trying to protect a rare parrot.

‘These people are very paranoid’ he tells me, ‘They thought I was with the paramilitary so they started shooting at me. My life was randomly saved by a passing friend who confirmed I was a park ranger. Only then did they stop’. I consider my expedition clothes and realise the perils of wearing camo in this country are significantly worse than a dressing down from the fashion police.

Alonso's breakfast. Enough said.

It’s a seven-hour drive along squiggly car advert mountain roads to our final destination, the soggy jungles of Choco - owner of the rare honour of being the wettest place on earth. Here, straddling the equator, the westernmost cordillera of the Andes slides down into the Pacific whose hot damp oceanic air dumps thirteen metres of rain on these steep mountainous slopes every year. The early explorers described it as a Turkish bath. It’s quite literally frog heaven.

I’ve never crossed a meteorological border before. But as we snake our way up the eastern side of the range, the neighbouring province is all sunshine and smiles. A pastoral fantasyland featuring adobe farmhouses draped in geraniums and farmers tending a patchwork of crops. It’s really rather idyllic. But as we cross over the crest of the range, we’re greeted by a wall of rain and two teenage soldiers brandishing submachine guns. Welcome to Choco, a forgotten land of steamy jungles and hot politics.

This is Colombia’s wild west. And that’s saying something. Cut off from the rest of the country by its crazy climate and corrugated terrain, it’s home to a smattering of cowboys, indians and the descendents of African slaves. It is also the scene of some of the country’s most violent standoffs between the FARC and Paramilitary, as they vie for a slice of the countries $13 billion cocaine industry. The lower altitudes are where much of the coca – the raw material for cocaine – is grown and processed, near the coast for easy transportation to neighbouring Panama and beyond. It’s not the sort of place to suddenly start snooping around, even for lost frogs.

The tearing down of the rainforest makes landslides all the more common. You can see why they are pretty deadly.

The dirt road we are bumping along on – incredibly one of the three main arteries feeding the entire province – was until eighteen months ago controlled by the FARC, whose roadblock’s deterred all but the most dedicated traffic. But in the last few years the government has staged a massive crackdown on these left wing rebels, killing several of their key commanders and forcing them back to the furthest corners of the country. Now our progress is slowed by frequent friskings from pimply government soldiers who look too young to hold a machine gun. But their presence makes it finally safe to explore. Alonso thinks we may be the first biologists to visit this jungle in decades making it the perfect place to find out lost toad.  

This soldier stumbled out of the jungle and found us sifting through leaf litter. Here Alonso explains to him that although it sounds unlikely we really are here looking for frogs.

 The search involves wading up streams, peering under decaying logs and riffling through leaf litter. ‘Watch out for snakes’ Alonso warns breezily. What kind I ask? Fer-de-Lance. Oh. Goody. Only the most deadly viper in Latin America. Its venom is one of those fancy ones that fries your brain and melts your flesh. A sort of serpentine Mike Tyson, the snake is huge and famously aggressive, if mercifully stupid. When chased by a Fer-de-Lance you’re advised to drop your backpack. The snake will then stop and attack that instead of you. A fine idea providing you aren't planning your escape in knee deep mud.

Our first day’s foraging brings no sign of the beaked toad but instead we uncover an Aladdin’s cave of amphibians; delicate glass frogs whose cling-film skin exposes their beating hearts, psychedelic sticky-fingered tree frogs and an undiscovered species of ancient toad that’s matt black with red eyes. The frog geeks are giddy with excitement. Me included. 

‘I’ve never found so many species so fast. Let alone just a short walk from the road’ says Robin. ‘Frogs are a great indicator of a healthy ecosystem. The forest here is obviously in great shape’.

So it should be. The very same dangers that kept biologists out of this jungle have also prevented the rest of the world from plundering its riches. Conflict, it turns out, can be the conservationist’s most unlikely friend.

‘It’s the same story in Congo, Laos and Burma. Areas of prolonged civil unrest are home to some of the world’s most intact forest,’ Paul Salaman of the World Land Trust tells me. ‘It’s not PC, but landmines are probably the very best form of conservation there is. A landmine notice keeps everyone out'

This very angry looking toad was just one of several potentially new species uncovered during our trip.

Having a viscous mass murdering terrorist group with a penchant for kidnap hiding out in the forest is almost as effective as a liberal sprinkling of landmines. Alonso explains, ‘If the FARC occupy the forest then it’s forbidden to cut down trees or kill animals. Not for conservation reasons, but because they don’t like people removing their cover or wandering about with guns’

One herpetologist even went so far as to name a new species of toad, Atelopus farci, stating that ‘the species is dedicated to the FARC for its conservation, but not political, efforts’. Ten years later however, he was held captive by a rival group, whilst surveying for new species in their territory. Perhaps they were annoyed they didn’t have a toady mascot they could call their own. He was released safely but probably wishes he’d never started the name game. Now everyone’s going to want one.

 

Glass frog photo by Robin Moore

The FARC’s presence may inadvertently protect the forest they occupy, but their involvement in the drug trade means they’re unlikely to be sharing the podium with Al Gore anytime soon. The destruction of the rainforest to grow coca is public enemy number one for Colombia’s wildlife, destroying an estimated 3000sqkm of precious primary forest every year. To add insult to injury their favourite place to grow the stuff is in the National Parks. Cultivating on public land conveniently does away with any irksome finger pointing at landowners. Warriors they may be, but eco-warriors they’re not.

It’s hard to choose, but my favourite frog of the day is a splendid Harlequin poison dart frog, a threatened species found only in the lowlands of Colombia. Ironically the presence of the  FARC shielded this animal from an increasing threat to frogs and a known threat to humans - kidnap.

The new morph of Harlequin Dart frog has a 'don't mess with me' look about him

The last few years have seen an explosion in a rather peculiar fashion for keeping frogs as pets. This in turn is fuelling a booming multi-million dollar illegal trade. Most popular are poison dart frogs who come in a kaleidoscope of colour combinations. These have evolved to ward off predators by warning of their toxicity but ironically have the opposite effect on fanatic frog-fanciers, who like to collect them like stamps. The rarer the better.

Robin tells me, ‘Many of these species inhabit very small ranges. After habitat destruction and disease, poaching is probably the biggest threat they face, enough to drive small populations to extinction.’

Even evolution makes mistakes: this frogs resemblance to a certain flag could be its downfall

Proving there’s no such thing as intelligent design, one morph has inadvertently evolved a perfect red circle in the middle of its back. This makes it the target of Japanese collectors keen to possess a frog that sports a facsimile of their flag. Our dart frog is jet black with yellow spots, a never-seen-before morph. As such it could fetch thousands of dollars on the black market.

According to Alonso’s investigation the local Embera Indians, who once used these animals to poison their arrows, are at the bottom of the chain in this market and paid as little as one dollar a frog. The dons of the frog-smuggling world it turns out are the Germans whose desire to be the first at everything even extends to frog collecting. Their methods of achieving this are, in my opinion, reasonable grounds for WW3.

The local Embera women were captivating in their fancy dresses

Most are carried out in cargos of tropical fish, but small time smugglers are known to resort to kinkier methods; stuffing frogs into film canisters and clearing customs with them strapped to their thighs. Or even shoved where the sun doesn’t shine. Ouch. All of which makes you wonder how one would explain away a severe case of croaking. Let alone deal with an escapee poison dart frog, heading north. 

Our Harlequin dart frog risks being snatched not just for its good looks but also its secret stash of drugs. Alonso’s most shocking discovery is a second, more organised ring of frog-nappers supplying the pharmaceutical industry.

The first frog we found was this male Andean Poison dart frog seen here carrying a tadpole on its back. They are dedicated parents and do not breed explosively like other species making them especially vulnerable to collection pressures. Photo by Robin Moore

Amphibian skin harbours a pharmacopoeia of chemicals that could provide cures for everything from cancer to AIDS. Our Harlequin poison dart frog for example is known to secrete a toxin that blocks neurotransmission and could play a role in treating Alzheimers. A new morph like this could contain the chemical blueprints for dozens of other medicines.

One of the problems faced by the pharma companies is that the frogs don’t synthesise the poisons themselves. Like little bio-prospectors they sequester them from their diet of ants, termites and beetles. So captive bred animals are no use to scientists, whose research can burn through hundreds of frogs. To isolate epibatadine, a painkiller two hundred times stronger than morphine, took over seven hundred Phantasmal dart frogs. It’s perhaps no coincidence this species is listed as endangered.

It strikes me that this is a perfect example of the value of biodiversity. This invisible interconnectedness puts a price tag on preserving the entire web of life. Even the termites.

It wasn't all frogs - this chrysalis was rather beautiful too

Quevedo is keen to buy up private land from farmers and establish reserves complete with guards, to protect Colombia’s biological treasure trove. He has created eighteen so far in other parts of the country and is looking for funding to start protecting the Choco. But it is a race against the clock. The streams that we are surveying for natural riches are also being eyed up by gold prospectors. Experts are predicting that Colombia could be the scene of the last great global gold rush, attracting 4.5 billion worth if investment from international mining companies over the next 10 years. Now that Choco is becoming safer, its vast deposits of alluvial gold can finally be exploited annihilating our amphibian El Dorado in the process.

‘These are not romantic gold miners going in with pans. To get the alluvial deposits requires huge machinery. Sucking up everything and dumping tons of mercury into the water’ Paul tells me, ‘Conservationists have to move faster than we’ve ever moved before or the whole area will be razed in ten to fifteen years’

It’s a twisted world in which the greatest threat to biodiversity is peace. But it’s perhaps even more perverse when you consider the economics of the situation.

The cost of conserving a slice of this pristine forest, containing what is perhaps the greatest concentration of unique biodiversity on the planet, is a laughable one hundred pounds a hectare. The real value of this land in terms of its role in purifying the water, recycling carbon and as a potential source of bio-chemicals is something we’re just beginning to quantify. 

But with an international drug war being fought on its doorstep, the Colombian government is focussed on restoring peace and attracting foreign investment and not conservation. This means that Quevedo has to look to international NGOs for support. There are a handful of international charities dedicated to saving frogs like Amphibian Ark but according to Robin Moore, ‘getting donors for amphibian conservation is harder than finding the Mesopotamian beaked toad’. 

Which is saying something. At the end of our three-day toad hunt our primary quarry has sadly eluded us. I like to think he was sitting in a tree looking down and laughing at us. Not missing presumed dead. Robin’s consolation is the discovery of a different species of beaked toad, which he believes may be new to science. This joins a handful of potential new species including one found by me.

 

This little film captures the moment I caught my first frog of the trip which just happened to be a potential new species

My herpetological holy grail is a little rocket frog. These tend to your classic little brown jobs: dowdy and unassuming. But my one has bright scarlet legs like he’s wearing red drainpipes. What a dude. It’s unlikely he’ll be called the Lucy frog though. Auctioning off scientific names has become a valuable money-spinner for conservation organisations. Which is fine by me. I’ll happily trade my amphibian immortality to ensure he’s still here in a hundred years time.

To support Pro Aves mission to conserve the Choco you can find out more about them and donate here

This blog post first appeared as a feature in the Saturday Telegraph magazine and can be read online here

 

The summer of sloth

Baby Elvis sloth and his favourite toy. Photographed by Gaby Di Caprio 

The world's gone bonkers for sloths. It seems my little video featuring the sleepy residents of the world's only sloth orphanage is the equivalent of grade A cute crack for millions of LOL squee loving junkies. It's been watched by nearly 2 million people around the world from Greece (one of the first countries where the clip went viral - but then they needed a laugh that week what with the small matter of total economic meltdown) to Guam (66 Guamians have now watched which is presumably the entire population). 

The sloths are now more famous than Jesus having been featured in Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, the Approval Matrix in the New York magazine and on CNN all in the space of a week. Everyone is jumping on the sloth bandwagon - I hear that Madonna is adopting one, Jordan is attempting to marry one and Obama is considering using the sloths to help negotiate a peace agreement with North Korea. 

Sweet dreams 

I am of course delighted that people have fallen for the sloths. They may not be your traditional cutie-pie pin ups, with their terrible table manners and lazy reputation, but they're hugely charismatic and deserve to be loved. Especially if it helps spread awareness about the need to protect their habitat from man's further incursion (which is what's ultimately responsible for all the orphaned babies). 

Fame can of course be a poisoned chalice so the sloths are lucky they have their adopted mum, sloth whisperer Judy Arroyo, to ensure that their new-found celebrity doesn't go to their heads. They don't want to end up like poor old Knut the polar bear, the Macauley Culkin of the animal world.

A few years ago the world went nuts for Knut, a cute 'n' fluffy baby polar bear born at Berlin zoo. His first public appearance was greeted with a frenzy of media attention and attended by no less than 500 journalists. He became the star of his own feature film and even made the cover of Vanity Fair. 

But within a year Knut had grown from a snowy white powder puff into a 17 stone mottled grey brute the size of an angry man. As such, his popularity waned and no amount of performing tricks with his favourite dirty sock could bring back the crowds that once thronged outside his enclosure. When Knut started to behave oddly zoologists declared that he had become a psychopath, addicted to human attention. A tragic tale indeed. 

Adult Knut is a massive cute *fail* for the squee generation

The Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz was the first to propose our love of cuteness as a scientific phenomenon. He believed that human attraction to animals with big eyes, oversized heads and baby-like vulnerability is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that we nurture our children. More recently scientists have discovered that cute imagery really does work like crack by stimulating the reward centre of the brain in the same way that sex, cocaine or good food does. It's powerful, primal stuff.

Warning: baby sloths are highly addictive 

Even scientists aren't immune to the lure of cute. A recent study showed that a rampant bias exists among researchers towards "cute and interesting" animals, with threatened large mammal species dominating studies and appearing in a whopping 500 times as many published papers as threatened amphibians. Teenage girls falling for Furbies is one thing but scientists choosing study subjects that give them the biggest cutegasm is a worrying trend indeed.

Which is why I love the Neotropical Conservation Foundation who have decided to support one of Central America's most neglected species - the Bolitoglossa salamanders. 

Photo courtesy of salamander saviour Joe Townsend 

If you like your animals slothful then these guys take the biscuit, moving as if they are in and on glue. Check out this video of a couple in the throws of a mating dance. It takes almost 30 seconds for the amorous male to move his puddy back foot purposefully towards the female. Something which is, I think, both hilarious and incredibly cute and best watched whilst listening to Prince's "Slow love".

These salamanders are lungless wonders whose elongated bodies absorb all the oxygen they require through their skin alone. Which is why they have such a slow metabolic rate and movement. Like sloths they too come from an ancient evolutionary line and survive predation by camouflage. In their case by mimicking monkey poo - such subterfuge being necessary as running away is simply not an option. 

It would be sad if this evolutionary strategy, successful for many millenia, is thwarted by the fact that there is nothing cute about looking like a slow moving turd. But these salamanders really need your help.

Their number one problem is climate change. They live on the tops of mountains and as it warms up there is nowhere else for them to go. Their habitat is also being destroyed so NCF are working with various partners to protect them and their mountain top homes. 

You can help the salamanders by supporting NCF, cutting down on your carbon footprint or making a small donation. 

So this summer lets celebrate laziness and spread the word that sloth is good in all forms from cute and furry to small and poo-like.

Sloth love

Living doll - if cute could kill, the sloths at the Aviaros del Caribe orphanage would make a formidable army

I’ve travelled thousands of miles to meet an animal I first saw on youtube. I’m not generally a fan of cute LOL viral funnies but Taz, a very itchy baby sloth, was different. She looked like a miniature hairy Yoda and possessed Jedi-strength comic powers, reducing the grown men who made the video to giggling fools (their helpless laughter is almost as funny as the scratchy sloth - watch below).

A bit of googling revealed a secret subculture of silly sloth videos, all filmed at the world's only sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, which just happened to be looking for volunteers. I had to go.

 

 

 

Much like junkies, baby sloths spend most of their time nodding off or scratching but would never steal your wallet

I've always been a fan of sloths. They're wonderfully freaky, yet perfectly adapted to their slow arboreal lifestyle. Impressively camouflaged courtesy of their mottled green fur - a miniature eco-system which harbours two species of algae, numerous insects and a moth which refuses to live anywhere else. Their nerves have even evolved to react slower so they don't flinch at loud noises - there's no point saying boo to a sloth - surely making them nature's most chilled-out animals.

Boo! Blame it on the metabolism...two thirds of a sloth's body weight can be taken up by it's stomach contents which take up to a month to digest.

They have very few natural predators and the only time they're vulnerable is when they leave the trees once a week and descend to the ground to poo. This behaviour has befuddled scientists for many years. One of the theories is that their solitary lifestyle affords few chances to hook up with the opposite sex and these toilet stops are a good way to meet other sloths. Very George Michael.

 

Why did the sloth cross the road? To escape the stupid American tourist with the video camera, who went on to post this tragi-comedy video of a sloth learning the highway code the hard way. Why they didn't put down the camera and help the poor animal is a mystery.

 

 

But evolution didn't prepare sloths for the power lines and roads which now crisscross Costa Rica's jungles. Individuals that have been zapped by electricity or run over, wind up here at the Aviaros del Caribe sanctuary where they're cared for by the legendary sloth whisperer Judy Arroyo and her staff. 

 

Sloths sleep up to 18 hours a day

The sloths at the sanctuary don't disappoint and are just as adorable as the video suggests. There are two species here: the two-toed sloths are the ones that look like the result of a crazy hybridisation experiment between a wookie and and a pig, and the three-toed which have the medieval haircut and enigmatic smile. 

Three-toed sloth 

 

Two-toed sloth

Regular readers will wonder what I'm doing writing about a sloth sanctuary - this blog is about my adventures in Latin America, trying to find out how to save the world's amphibians. Well, I've realised that frogs have a bit of PR problem and are not as popular as they deserve to be given how diverse, funny and amazing they are. So I've decided to pimp out the sloths to try and save the frogs.

This little guy I found in Peru is easily as cute as a baby sloth and so much more in need of your love

Such is the viral power of the baby sloth, I decided to make my own super cute sloth video to lure people to my blog to discover how cute frogs are and how much they need our help. I released it a few days ago and sure enough it's gone viral. Here is my video - "Meet the sloths":

 

 

So for all the LOL baby sloth fans that have read this far - take a moment to think about the frogs. These cuddly sloths are not an endangered species but the world's frogs are dying out at an alarming rate. Like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie, forty percent are going extinct thanks to a deadly fungus that's sweeping the planet. It's the biggest extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped off the planet but not enough people care as it involves amphibians and not LOL furry cuties like sloths or pandas. You can change that.

The Costa Rican red-eyed tree frog is being killed by a deadly fungus  

So stay tuned to this site, spread the word and let's make the frog's go viral for a change. If you really want to help then you could even make a tiny donation. In return I promise to deliver more baby sloth cute crack to feed your addiction.

It is exhausting being so sweet

There are many things that can be done to help the frogs without having to open your purse. 

1 Don't use pesticides and buy organic. Amphibians are very sensitive to pollution as they breathe through their skin. Atrazine in particular (the world's commonest weedkiller) is doing a top job of damaging frog populations world wide. 

2 Don't eat frogs legs. Ever. Frog farms are cruel and spread disease. 

3 Don't buy wild caught frogs. The illegal pet trade is devastating wild populations and also spreads disease. 

My scatological jungle adventure (Or how I left a shit job in London to hunt monkey poo in Peru)

 

Me posing with some lovely shiny shit-eating beetles

I donated my poo to science today. Not something I thought I’d ever say but I’m helping a Peruvian entomologist further her dung beetle studies and she needed volunteers. 

Apparently it’s not easy to find people prepared to crap for conservation. The sad thing is, my act of charity only enticed a paltry half dozen nondescript brown beetles whereas Sarah, the entomologist, has ensnared a healthy sampling of the hundred or so species that inhabit the Amazon basin, including some rather splendid metallic blue ones the size of a conker. We suspect my coffee addiction is to blame for rendering my personal refuse repulsive to the resident beetles, so I am going to have to forgo my morning ritual for the next day and repeat the experiment all over again. Science can be brutal.

Poo pot results. Mine is on the left. It's like the difference between a gourmet gumbo and a cup a soup in terms of protein. 

My involvement with dung beetle studies is a new path for me. Until recently I had a different kind of shit job. The regular kind; where you work too hard to pay your mortgage and dream of doing something different. Then came the credit crunch and I decided to escape the second winter of discontent by leaving my job with a nest egg just big enough to live a modest life in South America, without having to rob a bank.            

For the next six months I’m following my passion as oppose to my pay cheque. I’ve always been interested in conservation and I love frogs so I’ve been travelling around Latin America investigating the current catastrophic amphibian extinction crisis and writing a blog about my findings. I’ve been on an expedition to look for a super rare pregnant male frog in Patagonia, visited fungus infested frog farms in Uruguay, licked poison dart frogs in Colombia and tasted endangered frog juice in Peru.

I love toads too. But would never lick one. 

The latest leg of my journey has led me to the Los Amigos scientific research centre deep in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, where, as a filmmaker, I’ve taken up the position of artist in residence. This tropical rainforest lays claim to being the most bio-diverse on the planet and the remote field station I now call home attracts biologists from all around the world to come and study the exceptional flora and fauna. It’s my job to study them with my camera and document their work. In my spare time I can indulge my amphibian obsession by combing the forest for freaky frogs.

The super freaky Ceratophrys - the frog that bites. Hard.

The research station is a strange place – a remote academic island in a vast green sea. With no phone and an antique internet connection, we’re divorced from conventional reality. We live in a bubble, which gets more than a bit Big Brother-like at times. Today is Sunday and I’m doing a dung beetle experiment but it could be any of day of the week. There is no such thing as a weekend – just sunny (work) days and rainy (rest) days. But the best thing is that, unlike my life in London, no two days are ever the same. 

Monday morning starts with my alarm going off at 4.30am to join the tamarin team, tracking monkeys for the day. Like most people here I have surrendered to the rhythm of the jungle, waking before dawn and falling asleep not long after the sun goes down. I pull on a pair of wet socks (nothing dries in the rainy season and dry socks are a well worn fantasy) and my uniform of functional field clothes and Wellington boots. There is something very democratic about our jungle existence.  We all wear the same dowdy clothes and we all smell of the same heady cocktail of mould and bug spray.

Me and Alison rocking the jungle look 

Silently we trek through the jungle pre-dawn to get to the tamarin’s sleeping tree before they wake up and disappear into the jungle. Through the gloom, we peer into the canopy waiting for the first signs of life. Tamarin monkey’s morning routine is not so different from ours - a bathroom break followed by food. We watch with great interest where these morning bowel movements land and scramble through the undergrowth to collect them. No, it’s not for another dung beetle experiment, its for the tamarin team’s research. This isn’t just poo, it’s important data which reveals a wealth of genetic and behavioural information about these monkeys.

Field researcher Rhea poses precariously close to our faecal quarry 

Collecting crap is actually the easy part of the job. The hard bit is following the monkeys as they travel at speed along their treetop superhighway. This involves us, lumbering ground level apes, battling though seemingly impenetrable bamboo thickets and racing up and down steep ravines to keep up with their lofty antics. It’s a serious workout made harder still by having to keep one eye on the canopy at all times so as not to lose the group of tiny brown acrobats, 40 feet in the air and each no bigger than one of Paris Hilton’s pet dogs. They don’t seem to mind being followed. At times they venture down to eye level, to stare you out before disappearing up a massive tree to gorge themselves on yet more exotic Amazonian fruits and presumably laugh about how stupid we look trying to follow them.

 
Me and a precious vial of monkey data 

For the tamarin team, with all that staring up, chronic neck ache is an occupational hazard. Along with insect bites. The worst of which is the legendary bullet ant, so called because its sting is said to be as painful as being shot. These inch long monsters hang out on the undergrowth ready to bite unsuspecting field researchers as the blindly push their way through the thicket. Getting stung by one is inevitable and something of a right of passage. My first one came from an ant that fell out of a tree and into my shirt, which led to a severely swollen right breast and 24 hours of nausea and a migraine-like headache. Much like losing your virginity, you never forget your first bullet ant.

 
 Super close up of a bullet ant I found online. A face only a mother could love.

Fortunately monkeys go to bed quite early and generally like to be back in their sleep tree around 4.30pm. This means that after almost twelve hours being led a merry dance around the jungle by a pack of cheeky monkeys, our fieldwork is also finally over. We head back to the lab exhausted, bearing our battle scars of cuts, bruises, bites and stings to put the day’s monkey poo booty on ice.

That's the skin of an anaconda clearly big enough to eat me

More often than not someone will have brought something curious back from the field, to be categorised and photographed - a crazy looking caterpillar, anonymous lizard or sci-fi beetle. This is one of the joys of living amongst a bunch of zoology geeks. Everyone here is as obsessed with nature as I am and happy to share their encyclopaedic knowledge of the jungle – it’s like living in an Attenborough documentary. Only itchier.

The geeks gather around an absurd caterpillar. Yes Sarah does have a monkey on her head.  

We eat dinner early, just as the sun has gone down. This is the one meal of the day where all the field researchers get together to discuss the events of the day. Conversational hors d’Oeuvres generally centre around comparison of the day’s chigger bites – tiny blood sucking mites that embed themselves in your skin and itch like crazy for days - before the main course of the days triumphs and frustrations. It’s a tough life being a field scientist, and I have a newfound admiration for them. Uncovering the smallest titbit of information about an animal’s behaviour is fraught with trial and error. The jungle rarely behaves itself and does not give up its secrets easily.

Me enjoying a rare cold beer at a bar in Boca Amigos, unaware of the thirsty-looking lady behind me. I thought the guys were looking at me.

In England my evening routine generally involved getting drunk with my mates in various different dingy London locations. The only bar around here is 30 minutes downriver at the nearby mining settlement of Boca Amigos, and it’s not a place you want to hang out at night. There is gold in the Madre de Dios river, which is mined, largely illegally, by small time prospectors who come down from the Andes. There are tiny ephemeral mining communities dotted all along the river, although Boca, with five permanent families is one of the more established. With more bars than houses, it has a distinctly wild west feel. The one shop on the muddy high street sells a motley selection of necessities including canned foods, rubber boots, bug spray and pregnancy tests.

The mercury the miners use has become a pressing environmental issue. The trouble with this heavy metal is that its concentration increases up the food chain. One of the scientists at the station has been studying mercury levels in raptors and discovered levels high enough to impair reproduction. The forest here may look pristine but the blood and feathers of the birds of prey here reveal a more worrying story.

Peggy and Rene and one of their raptors 

After dinner there is generally another team heading out to study the jungle at night. Tonight I’m joining a group to trap bats. It’s also the first outing into the field for the baby owl monkey that arrived at the station a few nights back. It was found half dead, by one of the station’s staff and immediately brought to the lab. Strictly speaking it should have been left there, it is strict policy here not to interfere with nature. But you would have to have a heart of stone to send this wide-eyed and whimpering baby back to the jungle to die alone in the dark. After an emergency operation to patch up his lacerated leg he now lives on one of the field researchers heads. The monkey is getting better by the day whilst the field researcher gets to grips with the trials of this unexpected motherhood – sleepless nights, potty training (essential for a baby that inhabits your hair) and loss of identity (she is now a platform for this much coo-ed over and unbearably cute newcomer).

Mookie steals another heart 

The jungle at night showcases an alternate cast of animal life. The beam of your head torch reveals the sparkling eyes of giant spiders, crooning frogs and predatory snakes. We’re catching the bats using large mist nets which we check every half an hour, in between telling ghost stories and swatting the thick mist of mosquitoes. There are dozens of species of bat here and over the course of the night we trap six of them from a tiny insectivorous one to a giant fruit eating false vampire. But the prize of the night, which makes Adrian, the station’s resident batman, quiver with excitement is a medium sized leaf-nosed bat.

Me and a bat with an overly large appendage. Could I be grinning any harder?

I have never been particularly enamoured by bats but Adrian’s enthusiasm, like that of all the field scientists, is infectious. This specimen it turns out is the Dirk Diggler of bats, endowed with an oversized appendage in order to ensure his sperm’s success in impregnating the highly promiscuous females of the species. He carefully places the bat in a cloth bag in the hope that it will deliver that all-important faecal gift that will help Adrian unravel some of its secrets.

We are lucky, the bat delivers and triumphant we head back to the research station for bed. Tomorrow will be round two of the dung beetle experiment and a totally different and equally unpredictable set of scatological adventures. I can’t wait.

I know this isn't just about frogs but...I wrote this article for the Telegraph newspaper recently and you can find it online if you are lurking in that area. However it occurred to me that if you aren't a Tory voting expat you may never get to read it. So here it is, my poo-y adventure with bonus extra photos not seen in the Telegraph edition. And swear words too. The Telegraph doesn't mind poo but won't tolerate shit. Apparently.

By the way if you like this kind of crap humour then you should check out my friend Marcus's very funny blog - The Lavatory Reader

2010: a frog odyssey

The Avenger joins the smoky jungle frog on board the spaceship EVACC

My amphibian adventure is about to go totally sci-fi. I’m going to witness the future of frog-kind and it’s like the plot of a bad B movie; featuring other-worldly amphibians, a space age frog pod, a killer fungus and a bunch of fiendish smugglers with frogs up their bums. 

This post has got it all, including alien frog sex (complete with kamikaze flies)

I’m in Panama, which is quite a shock after Colombia’s raw Latino charm. First up they use US dollars as their currency, which is a bit of an eye opener. The drive from the airport reveals a capital city with a skyline straight out of Miami Vice. I’m told by my taxi driver, who speaks to me in perfect American, that Panama city aspires to be the Dubai of Central America. Oh. Dear. I hated Dubai. A city of transitory superlatives, full of wanton souls acting out hollow lives in a Disneyland of western consumption. My heart sinks.

The buses in Panama are cool, in a sweaty way

I’m plopped out of the cab into some bland suburb of pastel coloured high-rise condos resplendent with gun-toting door men. My hostel is an ugly modern house with what looks like an ashtray for a garden, just around the corner from a 4-lane highway and a supermarket the size of an airport. I feel a long way from the frogs.

But I’m not hanging about. I’m heading into the Panamanian highlands on a mission to visit EVACC – a space age amphibian evacuation centre nestled in the heart of an extinct volcanic crater.

EVACC: A terrifying vision of the future where frogs survive in sterile pods and crocs are mandatory footwear.

It all sounds very Moonraker, so I’m half expecting Jaws and his pigtailed girlfriend to greet me off the bus. Instead, I’m met by the very wonderful Edgardo Griffith and his lovely wife Heidi - the original frog Samaritans.

Edgardo checks on his babies - each tank has temperature, light, moisture and ph monitored to suit the frog's needs.

Back in 2004 the deadly Chytrid fungus was steadily creeping south through Central America, killing thousands of frogs. Aware of what would happen when it hit Panama a team of pioneering frog scientists hatched a controversial plan to conduct the world’s first frog swoop. The idea was to mount a massive rescue operation to scoop up enough specimens ahead of the advancing fungal wave to create an amphibian ark. 

The El Valle Amphibian Conservation Centre now supports over fifteen utterly unique species which thanks to the fungus, can no longer live outside this sterilised building. One of the key species they wanted to save was the awesome golden frog.

Panama's famous golden frog looks unnervingly like a slightly annoyed plastic toy. 

The rather poorly named golden frog is neither gold nor a frog but a terribly polite yellow toad, which likes to wave at other yellow toads it sees down by the stream. The theory is that streams are noisy places and the waving beats croaking over the din of running water in order to get laid or pick a fight. You can watch the absurdly hilarious sight of toad semaphore in the Attenborough clip below. It's brilliant.

Somewhat ironically for an animal that’s now extinct in the wild, the golden frog has always been a symbol of good luck. It’s the countries number one national treasure – the Panamanian equivalent of the panda. Rather like the Queen, the golden frog can be found looking mildly annoyed and waving at you from stamps, tea towels and other tourist trinkets.

Love the car - Edgardo and Heidi drive a golden frog rana-mobile...not sure if it waves politely but it's perfect for the Avenger

..they even have a rana-loo. Just the place to have a lucky poo.

But fame has been this frog’s final undoing. Any golden frogs that survived the fungus were swiped from streams by illegal frog nappers and sold to fanatic collectors for up to $5000 a pair. 

The illegal trade in frogs is a booming multi-million dollar industry that's making a significant dent in wild populations of many rare amphibians. For some strange reason amphibians have no official status and are lumped together with fish - a small legal detail which makes them easy to smuggle through customs amongst cargo of tropical fish. 

Proving that even evolution makes mistakes - these Colombian dart frogs have inadvertently evolved a facsimile of the Japanese flag in their backs, making them highly sort after by Japanese collectors. 

My sources tell me they’ve even heard of small time smugglers adopting an altogether kinkier approach - strapping frogs to their thighs or sticking them in tubes and smuggling them through customs up their bums. All of which makes you wonder how one would explain away a severe case of croaking or deal with an escapee poison dart frog heading north. It seems hard to believe.

But it's true. Earlier this year Hans Kurt Kubus was busted in New Zealand with no less than 44 lizards in his pants. And one very frightened trouser snake.  

Conforming perfectly to national stereotypes, the dons of the frog smuggling world are in fact the Germans whose desire to be the first at everything even extends to frog collecting. Many of the world’s rarest amphibians end up being traded under the table at a huge herpetology fair in Germany, which is presumably crawling with Teutonic types with with herps in their pants.

The market is global. It's not just the German's who've got their finger in illegal the herp pie. I even found a story about a British TV producer of wildlife documentaries found with a bunch of rare frogs in his suitcase. Imagine that? 

No one will notice if I just take one...

Edgardo takes me on a hike to explore the cloud forests surrounding El Valle. They look like a fantasyland for frogs, full of crystal clear streams and huge trees dripping with moss and bromeliads. But it's eerily silent – we hear just the one solitary frog calling during our walk. He tells me that the fungus wiped out 80% of the hundred or so species found here, many of which were found nowhere else on earth. 

These frogs will not be able to return to their natural home until some clever scientist finds a cure for Chytrid. In the meantime the food chain is responding to the missing frogs - zoologists have already recorded the disappearance of some species of amphibian-eating snakes.  

 

The forest of El Valle looks completely normal but is strangely silent 

But there will be no point in finding a cure for the fungus if the cloud forests no longer exist. In a bizarre final twist to this story, the frogs are being replaced by another animal waiting to croak - US retirees. The Panamanian highlands are being sold off as a cheap place for Americans waiting to die - with acres of cloud forest being destroyed to create gated developments and golf courses. A sterilised version of nature suitable for American pensioners.

The frogs at EVACC are extremely pampered - katydids have their powerful mandibles and spiky feet removed so they can't cause any damage when being hand fed to the frogs 

There is no denying that EVACC is a similarly strange place for frogs - a vision of a future where frogs exist only in sterile life support machines. But without Edgar and Heidi and EVACC these animals wouldn't exist at all. 

I feel incredibly privileged to be able to hang out at EVACC. In fact I've chosen to spend my birthday cleaning poop out of tanks and feeding the frogs so that I can spend some quality time watching these amazing animals.  

 

A juvenile Hemiphractus fasciatus, born at the centre

But my best birthday present is the arrival of a freshly metamorphosed golden froglet, which will share my birthday and is named after me. I am super chuffed for so many reasons. 

 

Lucy's birthday golden frog

EVACC may not look like a cloud forest but Heidi and Edgardo's extraordinary efforts to mimic nature in a plastic tank are clearly paying off. The frogs are not just surviving, but breeding like crazy. If all of EVACC’s bumper crop of golden frog tadpoles turn into toads they won’t know what to do with them all.

Which makes me wonder if Edgar and Heidi were allowed to sell off the spare frogs then perhaps they could help fund their conservation. And perhaps even prevent them from being stuck up German's bums. Well maybe.

Copulating for conservation...now there's an idea.

The lost city of frogs

 

This country will not let me leave...

I’ve been hijacked by Colombia. I’m meant to be in Panama by now, but I’ve just postponed my flight for the third time in three weeks. I’m being held captive by this country and its exotic charms. I’ll never make it home at this rate.

I never even meant to come to here. I wanted to, but to be completely honest I was scared. I was worried that I’d be spiked with Burandanga - the freaky local backstreet drug that’s made from the Datura plant, which removes your free will and turns into a self-robbing zombie. In fact all I had to worry about was being invited to lick poison dart frogs with a nutty professor. How could I have been so ignorant?

 
Military man outside the halls of justice in Bogota. The ants are an art installation and represent Colombia's millions of refugees - the human cost of cocaine in this country.

I came because I got an email from a frog scientist who’d been reading my blog and invited me to Bogota to check out the work he and his colleagues are doing. It was an exceedingly random offer, but these days I’m really into random. I like the idea that the frogs are guiding my path, taking me away from the well-worn South American gringo trail and the same old travel decisions I’ve made for years. I’m handing my destiny over to the little green guys. So I said yes.

No room for Superman - public phone Bogota-style

It turns out that frogs make pretty good travel agents. Far from being the post apocalyptic urban hell-hole I had in mind, Bogota rocks. It’s the coolest city I’ve been to in years and really no more edgy than many other South American capitals.

It kind of reminds me of a Latino version of New York 20 years ago – pulsating with energy and an eclectic culture featuring great live music, world class museums, funky flea markets, kooky hole-in-the-wall bars and some seriously dodgy neighbourhoods rubbing up against super chic uptown restaurants and clubs. Oh and great people, who are also unbelievably welcoming. So, not that much like New York, then. 

          

Snappy dressing knows no age limit in this town.

Colombia has tons of really amazing frogs too. Nearly eight hundred different species. In fact, if it wasn’t for Brazil (which has a few more species but is, after all, massive) it would be the amphibian capital of the world. And those are just the ones they know about - there are hundreds of species that have yet to be discovered in jungles that continue to be no-go areas thanks to decades of civil war.

Look into my eyes...one of Colombia's many mesmerising amphibians 

The frog scientist who invited me – Dr Andrew Crawford – is part of a crack Colombian frog squad. They’re like the amphibian A team, battling away on the fungus fighting frontline. The deadly Chytrid fungus is invading this country from three different entry points. If someone doesn’t find a way to save the frogs fast then up to eighty percent of the species could go extinct in the higher altitudes favoured by the fungus - a devastating loss to global amphibian biodiversity.

But I believe in Andrew and his team. Not just because he’s passionate, dedicated and super smart but mostly because he looks just like Brains from Thunderbirds. And Thunderbirds always win.

   

Brains Bigger brains

Andrew’s lovely wife Vicky is tasked with getting to know the enemy by cultivating Chytrid in the lab. Ironically for a fungus that is seemingly unstoppable in the wild, Chytrid is remarkably hard to culture. After 15 months of trial and error Vicky and her colleague Edgar behave like proud parents that have survived IVF and refer to their first precious culture as their baby, and spoil it rotten. I made this short video of baby taking its first steps.

The large round circles are the fungal bodies, these imbed themselves in the frog’s skin cells and then the small mobile spores erupt out of them, ready to grow more fungus. It looks so innocuous but is an alarming efficient frog killing system.

They are also searching for a potential foil to the fungus and are particularly interested in the skin of a population of Atelopus toads that have Chytrid but haven't died from it. By culturing the skin scrapings of these toads they hope to discover some frog-friendly bacteria that's providing them with their immunity. 

Above the clouds...the remote and beautiful "lost city" 

I’m taking a break from the capital to make the five-day trek, high up into the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern Colombia to visit the “lost city”, which sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie and has the looks and story to match.  This ancient city, home to the pre-Inka Tayrona people, was abandoned during the Spanish conquest and “lost” for centuries until a couple of Colombian treasure hunters stumbled upon it in the early 1970’s.

At the time, the area was a prime spot for the cultivation of Santa Marta Gold – a particularly strong strain of marijuana.  The grave robbers must have thought they’d smoked too much when they discovered this Eldorado - half consumed by the jungle and stuffed with gold. But in the end their greed was over-powering and they killed each other, and many others also died during the subsequent looting of its treasures.

 
 The trek features amazing scenery and competitively priced wildlife

It’s an incredible hike, gruelling and beautiful in equal measures, up and down steep mountain paths, through pristine jungle and wading waste deep through crystal clear rivers, which I only hope are still Chytrid free. At least it sounds as if the frogs here are alive and well – we are serenaded each night in our hammocks by a cacophony of amorous amphibians including the deafening whoop-whoop of the smoky jungle frog.

The smoky jungle frog is a big meaty brute - I had to stop our camp cook turning this one into dinner. 

Until a few years ago this area was used to cultivate coca and process cocaine paste. Now the local farmers are subsidised to grow cacao instead. But that primary rainforest is gone forever and with cocaine consumption and production on the up, the coca farmers have probably just moved deeper into the mountains to tear down and poison yet more pristine jungle. Colombia has a significant portion of the Amazon and the destruction of rainforest to cultivate illegal crops is a significant environmental issue. In fact it's been estimated that every gram of coke implies the destruction of 4 sq metres of rainforest. A sobering thought indeed.

The one Kogi man who'd let me take his photo - seen clutching his poporu, which contains the lime they add to the coca leaves they chew.

As we huff and puff our way up the mountain, we are frequently passed by ethereal figures clad in white, making light work of these brutal jungle paths. These are the Kogi Indians – the direct descendents of the Tayrona - whose culture has remained miraculously intact given their proximity to “civilisation”. I’m fascinated by them and keen to converse but they’re having none of it. Their disdain for me is palpable. 

Kogi women outside their village 

But who can blame them – from conquistadores to greedy grave robbers, pot growers and coca farmers to armed guerrillas, outsiders haven’t exactly put on a particularly favourable show to these people. Our guide tells me that the Kogi refer to themselves as “Elder brother” and everyone else as “Little brother”. They believe that little brother is young and foolish and destroying the planet. No arguing with that.

Buried deep in the jungle, twelve hundred moss covered steps lead to the "lost city". We climb up to the top, where the chiefs would have lived and are surrounded by clouds. It really is like something out of Indiana Jones. Totally magical. 

But what really blows me away is that there, at the very top and in the spiritual centre of the city, is a giant rock shaped to look like a frog. Apparently frogs, like all nature, were highly revered and a potent symbol of fertility – the essence of life. The Tayrona, it seems, put frogs at the very centre of their world. 

I had no idea and like the big superstitious frog freak that I am, I thank the little green guys for bringing me here to show me this amazing place. 

 
 Home at last - me and the big frog

As I descend back into the jungle I become pensive, unable to ignore the irony that western scientists also saw a link between frogs and fertility. But instead of building statues and worshipping them, we injected them with urine to find out if women were pregnant. 

The twenty year mass export of African clawed toads for use as pregnancy tests is now widely considered to be the way that Chytrid has spread around the planet. Thanks to this bizarre tale of human folly, this frog statue could be the only frog left standing in these forests in a few years time. The Kogi may not want to talk to us, but perhaps we should have listened to them and their ancestors rather than stealing from them.

I leave you with the only frog that has ever come close to being the centre of our world, singing a strangely prescient song. Take it away Kermit....

Over-dosing on poison dart frogs in Bogota

Me sporting this season's must have accessory - the poison dart frog brooch, which doubles as a weapon. If attacked, simply ram the frog into your assailants mouth and hop away. So much more fashionable than mace. 

Adolfo Amezquita is a professional frog licker. A dream job presumably, for a hopeless toad junkie like this blog’s great friend David Theiss. Except that Adolfo doesn’t lick them to get high, he does it to figure out how poisonous they are. This sounds like the very definition of foolhardy behaviour but Adolfo’s been slurping on frogs for over 20 years now and has lived to tell the tale, so there must be method to his madness. 

I'm hanging out with Adolfo in his lab in Bogota, Colombia. He hands me a bright orange specimen and asks me if I want to feel the burn, the intensity of which tells you how poisonous it is. Nervously, I accept. Even though Adolfo’s done toxicology tests on these frogs and knows they’re safe to suck it still seems like a fantastically bad idea. Then there’s the fact that licking is really quite an intimate thing to do to another living creature and not my general getting-to-know-you opening gambit. I’m wondering if we should at least have casually dated before I wipe my tongue across his back. I don’t even know his name.

One of Adolfo's crazy frogs. Thankfully this one doesn't sing.

Nevertheless, I dive straight in with a big swipe and wait. Nothing. Adolfo tells me I have to excite him to get him to release the poison. Now I’m rubbing and licking the frog furiously and feeling very, very weird indeed, and it’s not because of the poison. I didn't come here to molest frogs and I’m sure I should be arrested for this. 

Then a very strong burny numbness spreads across my tongue and lips. This is obviously the frog’s revenge for me jumping to first base without even swapping numbers. You can watch the whole sordid episode below if it hasn’t been banned by Vimeo already for its salacious salivary content.

There is one frog that Adolfo wouldn’t lick - the appropriately named Phyllobates terribilis. Terribilis is the original poison dart frog - the one that the Colombian Embera Indians used to hunt with before they discovered guns. Hunters would simply wipe their blow pipe darts on the frog’s skin and they could still kill a tapir up to a year later. 

That's some sell-by date and makes this little yellow frog Mr Big in the poison stakes, the deadliest animal on the planet. One 5 cm frog packs enough punch to kill 10 men. He's more toxic than the king cobra, funnel web spider and blue ringed octopus put together. But there is of course a difference between venomous and poisonous and to get killed by this frog you'd have to have a very unlucky fall, face plant the forest floor and have a frog hop in your mouth. Or something else equally unlikely. Like flying to Bogota on a whim to lick one in a lab.

Terribilis may be toxic but he makes a great dad - carefully watching over eggs and carrying tadpoles around on his back, making him significantly more dedicated than many men I know. 

The toxin Terribilis produces, an alkaloid called batrachotoxin, is 250 times more potent than strychnine and works on the nervous system. Once it enters the bloodstream, in a matter of minutes the victim loses control of their muscles and dies by suffocation or cardiac arrest. Nasty stuff. 

But poison dart frog's skin alkaloids are currently the subject of intense study for their medicinal use as muscle relaxants, heart stimulants and appetite suppressants. The only problem is that frogs raised in captivity don't produce the same toxins as those in the wild. It's all in the diet apparently - the frog's recycle and adapt their alkaloids from the ants, termites and other itchy scratchy insects they eat. The more varied the diet, the stronger and more complex the toxins. Another reason (if we needed one) for the urgent conservation of frogs and their habitats. 

C'mon let's do the conga...3 of these candy-coloured cuties are in fact all the same species - an oddity that apparently makes no evolutionary sense as predators have to learn to avoid different colours and patterns

When Adolfo's not licking frogs, he's teaching them to watch TV. Or rather, lick TV. Even in the wild, there's a huge variation in the toxicity between species and even individuals within species and he and his students are trying to figure out how and why. One of their many experiments involves playing captive bred frogs cartoons of their favourite bugs (ants, mites and flies) to see if they preferentially choose those with useful alkaloids, which they did. The sight of a frog licking an animated ant off a screen shouldn't be funny, but I thought it was both amusing and amazing in equal measures (sorry for the squealing). 

Adolfo recently discovered a brand new species of dart frog in Colombia. Despite looking completely different, it is actually the sister species of terriblis and toxicology tests have shown its skin also contains the same potent batrachotoxin brew. Adolfo has yet to give it a name and obviously I lobbied hard for Phyllobates amphibian avenger but he was having none of it. 

Having an animal named after someone has become an important money spinner for scientists and conservationists to help fund their work, so he's taking offers. For a few thousand dollars the second most poisonous animal on the planet could bear your name, a rare honour indeed. Adolfo supports important conservation work with these frogs as well as trying to unravel their toxic secrets so it would be money well spent. 

The as-yet unnamed new species of dart frog...which for the time being I like to affectionately call Phyllobates sarah palin

The mind-blowing frogs of Peru

Fear and loathing in Peru. Me and the super psychedelic Phyllomedusa bicolor, who’s skin contains more mind-altering substances than the late Hunter S Thompson’s bathroom cabinet. I love this frog but resisted kissing him for fear of losing what's left of my marbles. 

My amphibian adventure is about to get really interesting. I’m on a fast train to frog central in the jungles of Peru. OK not a fast train, but three flights and a rather slow boat ride. Anyway, I’m swapping the glamour of Rio de Janeiro for a month of mud and mosquitoes in the middle of nowhere. It’s time to go native with the frogs.

  

Welcome to the wild west. My fellow passengers on the river bus are miners, mostly illegal, who come down from the Andes to pan for gold.

My last gasp of civilisation is the jungle town of Puerto Maldonado near the border with Bolivia. From here it’s a 10-hour boat ride up the Madre de Dios river to my final destination, the CICRA Los Amigos biological research station deep in the heart of the Amazon basin. A remote academic island in a vast green sea, that just happens to be the most bio-diverse jungle on the planet. For the next month I’m going to live with a dozen or so field scientists exploring this rainforest and documenting their work as CICRA’s artist in residence. I can’t believe my luck. 

  

CICRA is the Hilton of field stations with 5 star facilities - my own solar powered hut comes complete with its very own gecko family to keep the mossies at bay.

There is also the distinct possibility that a month in the jungle with a limited cast, no phone and an antique internet connection will send me completely mad. I arrive at dinnertime and am almost immediately warned of how intense it can get here. It feels a bit like being dropped into a reality TV show - Big Brother crossed with I’m a Celebrity featuring a cast of zoologists. And millions of biting insects. Here’s hoping I don’t get voted out in the first week or forced to eat witchety grubs to save my career.

 

CICRA = frog geek heaven, the ID chart for the local amphibians lists almost 100 species

But the frogs will keep me sane…as long as I don’t start licking them. The jungle here harbours an amphibian pharmacopoeia stocked with a kaleidoscope of candy coloured frogs whose skins secrete a heady cocktail of chemicals. Amphibian’s skin is their Achilles heal – exceedingly delicate, it has to be permeable enough for them to use as a second lung, and therefore prone to infection (just look at the havoc caused by the skin fungus Chytrid). The toxins it produces are the product of millions of years of evolution and a never-ending chemical war waged against a battery of wannabe parasites. 

As a result my first Peruvian frog-hunt uncovers enough drugs to get me arrested in Kansas (as this video shows).

Amongst the top frogs in the chemical war stakes are the fantastic Phyllomedusa family, also known as Monkey frogs. This is because they live high up in the trees and not because they are the product of some warped hybridisation experiment (for those that were disturbed the first time, I do apologise for including that link again but I couldn’t resist it).

The biggest of the bunch, Phyllomedusa bicolor synthesises an arsenal of chemicals capable of knocking out Pete Docherty, which are secreted in a milky fluid to protect the frog from snakes. These include a long list of peptides such as dermorphin - a painkiller over 30 times stronger than morphine at the cerebral level but bioactive and therefore non-addictive.

The Matses equivalent of popping to the chemist is to subject the monkey frog to a form of medieval torture in order to get it to produce its toxic sweat

The local Matses Indians have long used the giant monkey frog’s sweat in various rituals and cures. Now pharmaceutical companies have cottoned on and are investigating the use of these peptides as treatments for a range of illnesses from Alzheimer's to brain cancer. When these drugs go on sale I think the pharma companies should donate a proportion of sales to saving the frogs that invented the chemicals (and also to the Amazonian tribal people who discovered their uses first). They could consider it as an investment to protect this biomedical treasure trove  that’s still largely waiting to be discovered, before it’s wiped out.  

The first frog I catch in Peru is the utterly alien Phyllomedusa camba, I am so happy I could pop.

I have always wanted to see a monkey frog in the wild and am ecstatic to discover three different species on my first foray into the forest. They are even more spectacular in the flesh – totally otherworldly creatures that advertise their trippy nature with even trippier looks. If William Burrough's designed frogs they would look like these guys with their lurid green waxy skins, go-faster stripes down their side and super puddy fingers. These frogs really blow my mind, without even having to lick them.

  

Big lesbian toads and frog magic in Brazil

  

Ipanema beach - not a lot of frogs here

The first frog I find in Brazil is wearing a wizard’s hat. He belongs to the bar maid in my favourite Sunday afternoon samba spot in Santa Teresa, Rio. She’s had him for several years and he lives on her leg.   

 

The toad looked more shocked than me

Now I love frogs, but even I'd think twice about branding myself permanently with a big fat magical toad. I'm thinking this lady must love them even more than me. And she sort of does. It turns out that her tattoo is a political statement. Sapatao, meaning big toad, is a derisive term for lesbians in Brazil. The bar maid's quite rightly proud of her sexuality and so in order to reclaim the insult she wears a giant toad on her leg as a badge of honour, which I think is very cool. 

I'm tempted to make a joke here about big gay toads in big hats. But I won't. 

Proud to be a big Bufo - the super cool bar maid at my fave samba spot.

I have to come clean. Even though Brazil has the greatest number of amphibian types on the planet – a whopping 811 recorded species - my decision to visit this country has very little to do with frogs and everything to do with samba, surf and caipirinhia’s. I’ve been invited to spend Christmas in Rio with my friend Bindu, who has the world’s most enviable life. A few year's back she wisely swapped her two up two down in Brixton, South London for what I can only describe as a rock star’s mansion in the bohemian hillside suburb of Santa Teresa. She likes to joke that I've visited her more now she lives in Rio than when she lived in SW9. But who can blame me. No-one likes South London. 

It’s unlikely that my frog hunting will go much beyond the beach, Bindu’s pool and the bar’s and samba halls of Santa. But Bindu is keen to help and enters into the spirit by asking her staff (yes, her enviable life also includes staff) whether they have seen any frogs on the property. But they haven't, so I am especially pleased to meet the lesbian toad on the bar maids leg. This will have to be my big Brazilian Bufo break. 

Gratuitous photo of an amazing Brazilian frog that I didn't find during my trip - the tiny and deadly Brazil nut poison dart frog, so-called because it deposits its tadpoles in empty water-logged Brazil nut shells on the forest floor.

But maybe the wizard toad has cast some sort of spell on me, as now the frogs are seeking me out. A few nights later I get a frantic phone call from Bindu telling me to come home immediately. A tiny weeny frog has just hopped into her kitchen and into a plastic lolly-mold that just happens to be on the floor, as if he wants to be caught. Bindu is blown away by this bizarre coincidence and when I get back she’s babbling about how I must have some special magical powers to attract frogs. 

Dramatic reconstruction of Bindu calling me with captured frog in hand.  

Things are about to get even more surreal. A journalist I meet at a party asks if she can interview me about my frog mission for Globo, the national newspaper. In a city that has more murders per hour than almost any other on the planet it’s hard to imagine my frog quest being newsworthy. But perhaps I’m the equivalent of the quirky kitten-stuck-up-the-tree-end-of-the-news story. Whatever, it’s a great opportunity to warn Brazilians about Chytrid (which has been detected in wild populations here) so I happily agree. 

Disclaimer - they made me do that cheesy pose. Honest. The photo shoot was embarrassing to say the least - featuring me pouring with sweat whilst trying to look cool in 40 degree heat. I gave up and let go of all dignity in the end and just did as they told me. Hence the pose, but at least the frogs look good. 

The copy inevitably starts off with jokes about me searching for my frog prince but at least they didn't call me a big toad. Anyway, the frogs get a big plug so I feel satisfied that my trip to Brazil has been worthwhile, and I didn't even have to leave the pool. Next stop, the jungles of Peru where my frog hunting will continue in earnest.