Researchers in Zimbabwe Find Rare Frog Thought to Be Extinct

Researchers in Zimbabwe have announced that they have come across a very rare frog, known as the ‘Cave Squeaker’ in the mountainous area of Chimanimani, in the east of the country.

The frog was first discovered and documented in the same area in Zimbabwe in 1962. However, since then, there have been no sightings of the amphibian.

For 54 years, the Cave Squeaker (biological name, arthroleptis troglodytes) was put on the ‘red list’ of critically endangered species and was marked as being possibly extinct.

Robert Hopkins, a researcher at the Bulawayo Natural History Museum, said that his team had been looking for these frogs for over eight years.

They finally found four Cave Squeaker frogs in the Chimanimani area in early December last year. He said that, after following a type of mating call they had not heard before, the team then discovered a male Cave Squeaker.

Following the calls of the male, they then came across two more males and a female.

Hopkins said that his team retrieved the frogs from their habitat, and that they plan to breed them in order to remove them from the critically endangered list.

Once they have bred enough Cave Squeakers, they plan on re-introducing the frogs to their natural habitat in the mountains of the Chimanimani area.