Lost Rainbow Toad Found After 87 Years

Herpetologists at Conservation International have rediscovered the exotic Sambas stream toad (aka Borneo rainbow toad, aka ansonia latidisca) after 87 years of evasion, and released the first ever photographs of the brightly-colored amphibian.

The spindly-legged species was last seen in 1924 and European explorers in Borneo only made monochrome illustrations of it. A decade or so later, the conservation groups added the species to their World’s Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Frogs campaign.

Researches recently took a team to look for the frog in the area of Western Sarawak.  After months of fruitless hunting, the researchers finally found the small toad two meters up a tree. Later they found another.

In the end the team had found three individuals of the missing toad species — an adult female, an adult male and a juvenile, ranging in size from 51 mm to 30 mm. All three toads exhibited those gangly limbs and the brightly colored patterns on their backs.

Read more in the original article here.  Also, see CNN's article here.

Also, learn more about Conservation International's Global Search for Lost Amphibians.