Golden toads of the mountain cloud forest

   Streaks of gold begin lo brighten the forest floor in the high, damp, cloud-enveloped forests of northwest Costa Rica's Monteverde Mountains. It is late April, and the early rains have stirred the golden toads from their hiding places under the moss and fallen leaves, where they spend most of the year.

golden toad

   The brilliantly coloured males converge on the rainwater pools and sit patiently round the edges waiting for the females who will come there to spawn. Barely tin (25mm) long, the male toads look like tiny golden statues in a water garden. As the females approach, the waiting males grab hold of them and hang on, and are carried to the spawning site. In the scramble, the males will catch hold of anything that moves, including other males. A male that is grasped by another male gives out a rapid vibration that signals 'Let go -I am male.'

   A female rapidly accumulates a horde of males, each holding on to some part of her in a desperate attempt to be able to fertilise her spawn. Sometimes a female is buried for hours beneath a heaving mass of males, unable to move until the stronger individuals have managed to dislodge some of their rivals. Once she can move again, the female heads for the pool and there releases her 200 or so eggs. The males still clinging to her fertilise them.

   Within a week, the entire female population has spawned, and the toads retire once more to their solitary lives among the leaf litter on the floor of the forest. The eggs left in the pool hatch as tadpoles a few days after being laid, and they remain in the water feeding on small plants such as algae as they develop into toadlets.

But even a few days without a thunder shower will be enough to dry up the shallow breeding pools. If this happens, many tadpoles and toadlets will die, unable to cope with the heat and lack of water.
   About five weeks after hatching the tadpoles will have developed into tiny versions of their parents, and will leave the pool.

   Golden toads are found nowhere else in the world, and even here their survival is uncertain.