Oophaga andresi

The cocorro (Oophaga andresi) is a frog.  It lives in Colombia in a place called Chocó.

Home
This frog lives on the ground in rainforests. People have seen this frog between 55 and 450 meters above sea level. This frog only lives in forests that have lots of water in the air and lots of rain. There must be more than 7500 millimeters of rain or other water falling to the ground each year.

Young
The male frogs choose good places for females to lay eggs. The male frog sits on something high, about 2 m above the ground, and calls to the female frogs.  After the eggs hatch, the female frog carries the tadpoles to pools of water in bromeliad plants. The female frog lays eggs that will not hatch for the tadpoles to eat.

Danger
Scientists believe this frog is in danger of dying out because it lives in a small place and because people catch the frogs to sell, even though this is against the law. People change the forests where it lives to build farms, get gold out of the ground, and make places for cows to eat grass. People make farms even in places where it is against the law to make a farm.

It is against the law to catch this frog. Because human beings fought a war in the place where the frog lives, frog-catchers could not come to the rainforest to capture frogs to sell. But because the government of Colombia made peace with the other group of fighters, people are catching the frog again.  Smugglers buy the frogs from Colombians for about US$3 each, but the frogs sell in North America for $1000 each. Because the frogs do not usually have eggs or tadpoles when they live with people, people catch new adults from the forest every year.

Scientists have seen the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis on this frog in some places but not other places. Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis causes the fungal sickness chytridiomycosis. This sickness kills frogs and other amphibians.

First paper

References

Category:Frogs of South America