A Calgary tech startup has successfully bred a critically endangered rainforest frog.
Biopod Systems Inc. says this is the one of the first times the orange variant red-banded poison frog has ever been bred outside of Colombia.
The company has developed new pod technology that can mimic the natural conditions of around 330 endangered animals by using real environmental data from their habitats. The app-controlled, self-contained ecosystems copy the same rain, temperature, humidity, sunlight and airflow that animals would experience in the wild.
“Our hypothesis is (that) giving an animal as close to its natural habitat as possible will help it breed,” Biopod founder Jared Wolfe told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
“One of the big focuses of the company is to further research and development in conservation.”
The International Union for Conservations of Nature (IUCN) has listed the red-banded poison frog, also known as oophaga lehmanni, as a critically endangered species. Before now, only 15 orange variant red-banded poison frogs were known to be in captivity. It's unclear how many frogs are in the wild, but the IUCN states that their numbers are decreasing.
This brightly-coloured frog suffers from very low fertility and is on the edge of extinction.
“Despite the -20 C weather in Calgary, this frog now has eight new babies to care for,” Wolfe said.
The mother frog carries the young tadpoles on her back, then raises them using special unfertilized eggs, which is the only form of nutrition the tadpoles will accept.
The microhabitats have started to be adopted by zoos and conservation organizations around the world.
