The Golden frog, Atelopus zeteki, is a species as important to the people of Panama as the Bald eagle is to citizens of the United States.  Their cultural significance dates back to Mayan times, and even today they are considered to be symbols of good fortune.  In Panama, the Golden frog (also known as the Rana dorada) has become a national symbol of nature.  Golden frogs are still used as advertisements for restaurants and hotels, and even appear on lottery tickets. You can also find some of those great Golden frogs here at The Houston Zoo!

Golden frogs are small frogs that range in background color from brilliant gold to greenish yellow with highly variable black markings.  They are endemic to cloud forests with clear running streams and prefer cooler temperatures.  Females are larger than males.  Wild frogs have a unique skin toxin, zetekitoxin, which is used for defense much as in other poison dart frog species.  The basis for this toxin comes from the food they eat in the wild; captive animals lose their toxicity.

Unfortunately, very few Panamanians have ever seen a wild Golden frog.  Habitat destruction, agrochemicals, and over-collection for the pet trade have all played a part in the decline of the Golden frog population.  The worst threat, however, has been the appearance of a recent fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (also known as “chytrid”) which is highly contagious and fatal to both adult and larval Golden frog.  In response to these threats, the Houston Zoo has joined a conservation initiative called Project Golden Frog along with a group of other zoos and scientific organizations whose primary goal is to preserve this species.

The Golden frog diet in the wild consists of a wide variety of different species of arthropods.  In captivity adults receive primarily two week old crickets that have been fed a highly fortified diet and are dusted with vitamin and calcium powder.  They are also given flightless fruit flies and occasional silkworms and small hornworms.  Newly metamorphosed frogs receive fruit flies, day old crickets and small arthropods known as springtails.

Maintaining not only the Golden frog, but also the other amphibians at the Houston Zoo is a challenging task.  These animals eat a lot of insects! Did you know that the Houston Zoo feeds over 18,000,000 (no, I did not make an error in the number of zeros) crickets per year to the animals in our collection?  The zoo amphibian species consume a significant part of this number.

Written by Stan Mays, Herpetology

Help provide tasty and nutritious grub for the Zoo’s Golden Frogs and the rest of our animal family this holiday season: Give the Gift of Grub!  TXU Energy is matching all donations through December 31, up to $25,000 total, so your gift could have TWICE the impact.  Don’t miss out on this truly GOLDEN opportunity.

Last Friday, we posted a photo on Facebook and asked you to leave your best caption in the comment section. Then readers could “like” each caption comment to vote for their favorites. Their votes, combined with those of our own panel, determined the caption to appear under the picture right here on the Official Houston Zoo Blog this week. We hope you’ll come back for the fun EVERY FRIDAY.

YOUR VOTES HELP DETERMINE THE WINNERS!

Here is the picture that was posted on Facebook last Friday, with the top voted caption by Esmeralda Hernandez !!! (thunderous newt-y applause!!)

Like my halloween costume? I'm a bacon bit on salad....hehehe!

FIRST RUNNER UP:

Kathy Burgamy: Don’t move…be real still maybe they won’t see me. What do you mean I don’t blend in? Dang it I like Fall better.

SECOND RUNNER UP:

Barbara Blanchard Reed: Sometimes you feel like a newt – sometimes you don’t.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:  (soo many funny ones!)

Benjamin Auces: To blink, or not to blink? Thats the question.

Renae Ludrick:  this isn’t where I parked my car!

Nicole Gayleen Porterpan:  I just newt that this new carpet would be the wrong color green.

Sean Kim:  ”Has anyone seen my copy of ‘Slithering Heights’”?

Noel Mauricio:  Vote for me, Newt…for President!!!

Janet Denton: Did you know Fig Newtons were named after me? True story!

Bridget Robbins Haines Wait, you mean my clothes aren’t invisible? I’m really naked? Smile! SMILE and maybe they won’t notice!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!

Thanks for joining in the fun!

And please come on back for next Friday!

TXU Energy Presents Chill Out at the Houston Zoo:

Houston summers are hot, but the Houston Zoo is cool. Click here for all our chill activities and tips.

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Check out our Facebook page to see the rest of the entries. We hope this brought a smile to your face. And stay tuned for next Friday’s photo! Tell your friends, share this on Facebook, Twitter or your own blogs, and start your office pools to see who can come up with the best lines. (To show the picture and link on your social media, just click the little icons under the title SHARE THIS on the lower left of this post).To find us on Facebook, type in Houston Zoo Inc. in the search field or go to http://www.facebook.com/houstonzoo and become a fan.

Just say NO to tacky ties!

Fathers Day is creeping up, and now that you’ve learned some about the Dads residing at the Houston Zoo, it’s time to finally pin down the perfect plan for that special dad in your life. As always, we are looking out for you and know not only the perfect gift, but the perfect way to celebrate too.

You’ve probably gotten dad a striped tie or two, some tools and lawn equipment (how fun for him!) and a lunch at The Olive Garden, but this year you need to break out of the box and get creative. The answer? Name a Houston Toad after him!

Houston Toads are a critically endangered species that, once native to Houston, now reside only in a small portion of Texas west of our city. The Houston Zoo’s conservation department has developed a Houston Toad program with hopes to increase their dwindling population and boost their likelihood of survival in the wild.

When you name a toad after dad, you’re helping support our Houston Toads, plus you’re giving one of the lucky toads a really cool name. Click here for more on the Houston Toad and the Name-A-Toad program.

Now that you’ve got the gift down, we have the perfect way to spend Fathers Day – our TOAD-ally Awesome Fathers Day event taking place on Sunday, June 19 from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the Reflection Pool. You’ll have a chance to introduce dad to one of those special Houston Toads, and you can partake in some TOADally awesome crafts and activities – all FREE with your Zoo admission!

The Houston Toad - Some names we've gotten so far include Sticky, Lord Mittens, Mongo and Mr.Chuckluck!

Can’t get enough toads in your life? Join us for special Toad Tracker Wild Winks taking place June 30, July 21 and August 13. These are one-of-a-kind overnight experiences where you will get to track toads on the Houston Zoo grounds at night. It could even be a good bonding experience with dad!  Click here for more details.

Toad trackers measuring a Houston Zoo inhabitant

As you might imagine, this makes things especially difficult when parenting comes in to question. Can you imagine if, while attempting to change your child’s diaper or tying their shoes, or teaching them how to throw a baseball you had to constantly be looking over your shoulder or warding off predators, without a weapon, claws, beak, hooves, horns or sharp teeth? It would make things pretty dang stressful and tiring, that’s for sure! And, because of other creatures “sweet tooth” for you, there is a good chance you would be sitting in a stomach basking in gastric juices before you were able to raise your offspring successfully.

For this reason, and others, you do not usually see a lot of parental care in the amphibious creatures. Most amphibians may be absent parents once the deed is done, but they have good reason, and they have adopted a reproductive strategy that works better for their kind.

Glass frog dads guard their fragile eggs

What’s the strategy you ask? Lots, lots, lots and lots, of eggs! By laying hundreds, if not thousands of eggs, there is the hope that a small percentage will make it to adulthood and eventually make more frogs or toads.

This is very different in the mammal and bird world where you see parental care as the major reproductive strategy, having less offspring at a time.

And- if you do have more than 2 or 3 offspring, you generally have aunties, uncles and grandparents to help with the rearing. Why else are we so engrossed by those national stories of those human parents who have 4, 6, 8 babies at a time?! We are amazed and question, how do they do it? The truth is these people must rely on family, good friends and corporate sponsors to make it work! Frogs do not have this luxury!

HOWEVER and quite amazingly, if you look close enough, there are several examples of frog dads out their that do protect their young, proving once again that amphibians (frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians) are one of the most surprising and diverse groups of vertebrates on this planet.

Although there are quite a few examples of good frog mommies, the majority are generally the males exhibiting parental care. This is because female frogs use up a profound amount of energy producing and carrying around all of those hundreds and thousands of eggs and don’t have much to give once the eggs are deposited. Babies mamma is usually way too tired, ready to prop her feet up, maybe get a massage, and eat a nice fly quiche.

So, in honor of Fathers Day, here are just a few examples of Toad-ally Amazing Amphibian Dads:

* Glass frog dads guard their fragile eggs which hang from leaves snapping at any potential intruders and mimicking their clutch of eggs as well.

* The African bullfrog guards his eggs and will aggressively defend the offspring. Once the eggs have hatched, he will dig a channel between the small pools of water the tadpoles started in, and an adjacent stream so the tadpoles may escape their evaporating natal pool!

* Species of the midwife toad actually carry eggs on their back legs until they are ready to hatch. The male will then transport them to water and let them go!

Poison dart frog

* Poison dart frogs will let little tadpoles take a ride on their back, moving them around to a nursery bromeliad plant filled with still water. Some will even transport them to nearby streams.

* Some African rain frog species will protect their eggs which have been laid in burrows in the ground.

* Gladiator frogs defend their stream side nursery pools and bust out with arm spears projecting from their bodies to aggressively defend their young from other frogs and/or sneaky cockroaches!

* Darwin frogs brood their tadpoles in their vocal sacs until they are ready to complete metamorphosis. Now that’s commitment!

Let’s hear it for the dads! Celebrate Dad by giving him a memorable Father’s Day gift this year – Name a Houston Toad after him! With your gift, you help us support Houston Toads, a critically endangered species native to Texas. Click here to learn more about Houston Toads and how you can further the Houston Zoo’s conservation efforts that help ensure their survival.

The ciritically endangered Houston Toad

Come to TOAD-ally Awesome Father’s Day on June 19! Come visit the newly-named toads on June 19 from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. as we celebrate a TOAD-ally Awesome Father’s Day at the Houston Zoo. This fun, family event will be filled with crafts, activities, Houston Toad info and much more! This event is FREE with your paid Zoo admission.

Thank you All for your donations so far to our Gift of Grub Campaign. The year is over but you can still contribute if you had been wanting to  but the holidays kept you busy. Help us to feed our 6,000 animals and priovide everything they need to be healthy and happy in the coming year by clicking www.houstonzoo.org/gift-of-grub or our CONTRIBUTE tab on Facebook!

AN ENDANGERED TOAD OF TEXAS NEEDS OUR HELP!

Did you know the Houston toad has not been seen in Houston since the 1960’s? It was the first amphibian ever placed on the Endangered Species List and is still considered one of the most endangered in North America. Although it once hopped in the Hous­ton area, rapid growth of the city resulting in habitat loss caused their disappearance in this area. Today, only a few hundred remain in the wild, and only in a handful of rural counties in the sandy soils of east central Texas.

A Houston toad in hand is worth.... lots!

Why should we care about the Houston Toad?
Toads and other amphibians control the insect population and are indicators of the health of our environment. The Houston toad is the only “endemic” toad in Texas. This means this species can be found in Texas and nowhere else on the planet. If they disappear from Texas, they are gone forever. Proud Texans want to preserve our natural heritage, and the Houston toad is a part of that heritage.

 What the Houston Zoo is doing to help Houston Toads
Did you know that at any given time, we care for thousands of Houston toads behind the scenes at the Zoo? At the moment, our Amphibian Conservation Programs Manager, Paul Crump, the Herpetology staff, and our dedicated Houston Toad Keeper are diligently caring for 4,000 endangered toads! When Houston toad eggs are found in the wild, they are carefully transported to our quarantine facility. The tadpoles will eventually emerge from the eggs and go through metamorphosis in a safe environment without threat from predators. In the wild only 2 out of every 1,000 toads will make it to adulthood. They are a vital part of the food web and are food for many other animals. Adult toads are then released back to the ponds they came from with hopes they will now be able to survive and reproduce. This type of conservation strategy has been proven effective in other endangered species recovery efforts. Because they are endangered, we are giving them a “head start” by helping them through this vulnerable part of their existence. A head start means a “favorable or promising beginning”.

What you can do to help Houston Toads
Help us to feed them by donating to our Gift of Grub campaign!

A Bug-Munching Mania
At the Zoo, the tadpoles feed on algae, sweet potatoes and leafy greens until they pop out their legs, develop lungs and emerge from their aquatic environment. Then dinner then switches to crickets – lots and lots of crickets! During the height of our Houston toad capacity in the spring our little toads will go through 1 million crickets per week! And let me tell you,  if you are looking to start a profitable new business, you should look into cricket breeding! Crickets are super-dooper expensive!

We are currently attempting to set up our own cricket colony at the Zoo and plan to add Mung beetles to the Houston toad menu as well.

Variety is the spice of life, even for a toad!

Learn more about Houston toads and how we are helping to preserve Texas wildlife at http://www.houstonzoo.org/HoustonToad/.  You can also pick up the November 2011 Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine to read all about the recovery of the Houston toad in Texas.

Spotlight on Texas

Ever wonder what animals you can find right here in Texas?  Well, look no further!  Most of the animals in the John P. McGovern Children’s Zoo can be found right here in the great state of Texas.  Some are here naturally and some you can find on farms across the state.  Texas has a great diversity of habitat with lots of animals!
As you first walk into the Children’s Zoo, imagine yourself in the city.  You will see a stream of Koi fish that are very colorful additions to many ponds and water gardens.  This is also where you can swap your nature items in our Swap Shop.  Of course where you find a great city, you will find a great forest.  Winding through the boardwalk you will see Deer, Turkey, Owls, Porcupines, Coati, Bald Eagle, and Otters!  As the Otters are enticing you to stop and play you will notice the nice coastal smell wafting your way.  The sounds of the

Coati

shore pull you along the stream to the coast to watch our Pelicans and sea gulls get their afternoon lunch.  Fish are flying through the air and our Pelican, Walter, is trying to woo the female, Mable, by giving her special treats.  Next door, the fresh water Alligator Snapping turtles take you back to prehistoric times when reptiles ruled the earth.  You will watch and wonder, “Just how long can they stay under water?”  If you sit and wait, you might want to bring a book because they can hold their breath up to 50 minutes!  As you wait, you see something pop up out of the corner of your eye.  When you go to look, nothing is there!  Everyone knows that patience is a virtue, so you sit for just a couple minutes and a prairie dog pops his head out to look for predators.  These rodents spend a lot of time burrowing in the ground.  Ever want to just burrow underground yourself?  Well, you can get a fresh perspective by popping your own head in one of the viewing windows.  By this time, it is pretty sunny and you see a nice cool cave.  Through our cave system, you will see some of the reptiles and amphibians that make Texas their home.  As you turn a corner to the second cave, you see a nice starry sky.  As you walk through you notice some fluttering behind glass.  At first you think it’s birds, but it is bats!  These fruit and nectar-feeding bats are our neighbors from Central America but are representing the insect eating bats you can find flying our night sky

prairie dog

right in our backyard.  There is a colony of around 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats in Bracken Cave, near San Antonia, that eat 250 tons of insects every night!  Talk about pest control!  As you wander out of the bat cave, you see a Swift fox.  Don’t let it’s size

white tailed deer and Rio Grande turkey

fool you into thinking it’s a baby.  These are actually fully grown adults.  Next, you see the farm animals.  These are all domesticated animals that many people raise.  These are animals that you can touch!  You may not be able to choose between the silly antics of the goats or reaching over to give our Zebu cattle a nice back rub.  Either way, they have a way of warming your heart.  By this time, you may be tired but the kids are still wild.  Go ahead and relax on a bench while watching your kids have a grand time on the play ground or in the water play area.
WOW!  Texas is big but you can see it all in just a short time right here in your home town.  So next time you talk a walk through the Children’s Zoo imagine yourself taking your own personal road trip through Texas.

—H.G. Wells

When the extraordinary Planet Earth series debuted on TV in February 2007, it grabbed attention around the world. 65 million of us had a regularly scheduled date in the living room for 11 weeks in a row, and sat riveted by breathtaking photography and the miracle of nature. Shot in the fairly new medium of HD, it took us to places and allowed us to bear witness to things we’d never seen before.  Everyone everywhere was talking about it — at the dinner table, via e-mail and around the water cooler (imagine, no one was tweeting yet!).

Starting this Sunday, March 21, Discovery Channel and the producers of Planet Earth bring us a new series called LIFE. Last night I was invited to watch a screening of the first episode, Challenges of Life, at the Landmark River Oaks Theatre, hosted by Target and BBC.  It is a particularly dramatic theme: The instinct to survive inherent in all living things and their ability to adapt to sustain the species.

LIFE, Discovery Channel's new series to begin this coming Sunday night

Narrated by Oprah Winfrey, the visuals remain spectacular, the stories engaging and the educational value excellent.  With this first ep covering foxes, whales, seals, reptiles, insects, plant life, primates, octopi, big cats, hippos and more, there is something for everyone.  Standouts to me were the way a small population of common bottle nose dolphins have learned to teach fish to jump right into their mouths, the lengths that a strawberry poison dart frog mother goes to ensure her babies grow and thrive, and how a primate species use tools.  With the latter, it’s at once uncanny and unsettling to see their arms and legs making the exact same motions as our own, and their faces frown and show the same exasperation as we do in learning how to wield a large rock as a hammer.

This strawberry poison dart frog is an immensely dedicated mother

All show considerable intelligence and drive that can only encourage new or heightened respect for the creatures we share the planet with. While these examples take place in exotic locales, it can’t help but remind us that to those who take the time to look, there is drama and spectacle going on all around us, all the time — in any tree or on a simple blade of grass.

It makes you think twice about burying yourself in your hand held device 24/7.  Hopefully.

Overall, the subject matter is nothing short of motivating.  Simply by making it this easy and appealing to explore the world we live in at a deeper level, the conclusion is this: We live in a gorgeous, fantastic, miraculous, wonder filled world. As the dominant species, we should and must do everything in our power to conserve and preserve it and all that lives.  There is nothing like the awe inspired by a show like LIFE to jolt us awake to this fact, and fuel a passionate desire to honor and protect our forests, oceans, plains, and mountain ranges, and all of their inhabitants.

Now there’s something to tweet about.

So clear your schedule to again be enchanted, amazed and inspired, brought to you by mother nature… and the producers at BBC and Discovery Channel! 

LIFE starts this Sunday, March 21, on Discovery Channel. It runs through April 18 and treats us to double episodes each time (8-10PM ET/PT). And stay tuned after the final show on April 18 for a special called, The Making of LIFE at 10 PM.

Written by Rochelle Joseph. Visit me at my animal and nature blog at:www.naturegirrrl.blogspot.com

Thank you to Discovery Channel and BBC for all photos but the dart frog from Michigan Science Art.

Eleven Houston Toads Chirping

Ten Floating Jellies

Nine Ne-Ne Geese Singing

Eight Growing Giraffes

Seven Orangs a’Hangin’

Six Entertaining Elands

Five Elephants Trumpeting

Four Komodos Crawling

Three Leaping Leopards

Two Curious Coatis

And A Toby The Red Panda In A Tree

Stay tuned to our blogs as we count down the 12 Days of Christmas at the Houston Zoo.