The Incredible Stubfoot Toad - Josh's Frogs Podcast Episode 56

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Josh's Frogs Podcast 22 min 8 chapters transcribed 1 month ago
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What is the purpose of Josh's Frogs podcast and who is the guest?

Josh 0:01
This podcast is about introducing our fans to the animals, plants, and other products that we work with at Josh's Frogs. It's a opportunity to paint a picture of our hobby that is refreshing. We want you guys to be successful with the animals that you're keeping. We want our hobby to grow ethically and sustainably into the future. Welcome to the Josh's Frogs podcast. I've got Austin again as my uh guest. We're gonna talk about stub-footed uh toads or harlequin toads, however you look them up on uh Google. Um but before we do that, Austin, for those of you, those of us who have not heard a podcast with you on us, tell us what you do at Josh's Frogs and how long you've been doing it.
Austin 0:47
Yep, so my name is Austin. I've been at Josh's Frogs for thirteen years now. Uh started right after college in twenty twelve, at the tail end of twenty twelve. Um but yeah, it's been a good fun time ever since. I started out doing just some of the production shipping stuff and then uh moved into tadpoles and then more amphibian husbandry stuff and now I'm running the tree frog and toad department. Um And so those Stubfoot toads or the Harlequin toads fall under my jurisdiction. Um and yeah.
Josh 1:26
Give us a idea of scope, like how many species are you guys working with in your department? Um and then like talk about the people, like how many people are working there taking care of the animals.
Austin 1:37
Definitely over fifty species. Um I would say actively breeding of those is probably closer to like in the twenty thirty range. Uh huh. We do work with breeders around the country, uh, sometimes internationally as well to kind of supplement the diversity that we have. Uh we do a lot of the stuff in house. We like to try to do as much as we possibly can, but we don't really have the infrastructure to do some of the the things just with the space that we have. So yeah.
Josh 2:07
Cool. Uh talk about people wise, how many people are in your department that are just doing tree frogs and toads? So I have

How many amphibian species does the tree‑frog and toad department handle and who works there?

Austin 2:15
Three people that are doing like adult and tadpole care and then three more people doing all of the froglet care. Cool. And then uh an assistant that helps to fill in some of the gaps that we have.
Josh 2:26
Cool. Cool. Cool. Um it's a cool team. Uh a lot of cool people breeding a a broad diversity of different animals, you know, oftentimes figuring out how to do how to breed uh animals. So that's really cool. All right. Uh tell us about these uh Stubfoot uh toads or Harlequin toads. What are they like? What do they look like? Give us kind of the rundown.
Austin 2:49
So Stubfoot Toads, Harlequin Toads, or Adelopus are these really, really cool South American toads. Crazy diversity in coloration and what you can expect, ranging from like jet black to bright yellow, and there's even some like purples and bright greens in there too. I believe there's a light blue one as well. But it might not be Around anymore. Um and I can touch on that because the Adelopus genus is probably one of the most endangered uh groups of animals species in the world. Uh you have, I believe it's over seventy percent of the genuses endangered or critically endangered or extinct. I believe up to 30% might just be extinct in the wild at this point, uh, from what the numbers on Wikipedia say. Um they did have like this big panic back when Kittrid was kind of ravaging South America in the eighties and nineties.
Austin 3:56
You lose the things like the golden toad, um the Encilious pereglens or pereglenus. Um that's definitely extinct. Nobody's seen that since like the late eighties. Um but the Harlequin toads are kind of an interesting One because they're in these really, really remote areas in South America. So you have the Andes Mountains that cut through the whole l western side of South America. Uh and you have some species on both sides of that. But it's really hard to get into those areas. So um Back in like the early 2000s, they were declaring tons of these species extinct, and it's like huge panics, like the loss of diversity out of this genus is just massive. But in like 2016, they started sending people out and doing surveys and they started finding a bunch of these species that they were saying were extinct.

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