Telmatobius culeus

The Titicaca water frog, white water frog, or Crawford's water frog  (Telmatobius culeus) is a frog.  It lives in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Peru.

Body

This is a large frog. The adult frog is 74.82 mm to 137.9 mm long from nose to rear end. Tihs frog has very small lungs, and they have only a few blood vessels in them. Scientists sometimes find a little air in the lungs, but sometimes there is none. The frog breathes mostly through its skin. The skin has many folds and many blood vessels so that it can act like gills. If there is enough oxygen gas in the water, the frog does not come up to the surface to breathe air.  If the frog wants to come to the surface but can't, it will spread its legs and toes so that as much of its skin as possible can absorb oxygen from the water. Scientists say this frog has the slowest metabolism of any frog under normal conditions, the fewest red blood cells, and the most hemoglobin.

Home
This frog spends most of its time in water. Adult frogs stay in areas with mud, sand, rocks, and plants. Younger frogs stay near rocky places. Scientists saw this frog around 3810 meters above sea level.

Scientists have seen this frog in a protected park: Titicaca National Reserve.

Diet

This frog eats soft-bodied water animals for example snails, insects, fish, and hard-shelled animals.

Young
This frog has young all year, but each female makes more eggs in warmer mothns (777-866 in October to February) and fewer in warmer months (115 in May).  When people put this frog in zoos or other human-made places, the female frog lays only 23-450 eggs. The frog lays eggs in shallow water near the land. It puts the eggs in places with underwater plants, for example Elodea plants, 2-15 meters under the water. The tadpoles take about four months to become frogs.

Human use
People catch thousands of these frogs to sell for food and medicine. People think medicine made with the frog's body can help impotence, asthma, and memory loss. People eat fresh, dried, as soup, and in powder for shakes. Visitors to the area eat the frog because people tell them it is a special dish.

Danger
Scientists say this frog is in big danger of dying out. Threats include habitat loss, climate change, water pollution, too much algae in the water, and people catching the frog to use in food and medicine. Scientists have found the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis on the frog since 1863. This causes the disease chytridiomycosis. This is even more dangerous for this frog than for other frogs because T. culeus only breathes through its skin, not through lungs or its throat. Fish from other parts of the world can harm this frog. People brought rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) to Lake Titicaca, and this trout eats the frog's tadpoles.

Scientists from the Denver Zoo work with Titicaca National Reserve. They go to the reserve to look for frogs with the Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungus, test the water in the lake, test other things about the park, and teach people who live nearby about the frog.

Scientists in the Denver Zoo, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Huachipa Zoological Park, and Museo de Historia Natural Alcide D’Orbigny have raised these frogs with humans.

References

Category:Frogs of South America