the Western Ghats rainforest<\/a> in India, but could not visit them during the Covid pandemic. When he went back later, the frogs had disappeared, according to a report from the ZSL.<\/p>\nPhotographers are accused of breaking the logs that were home to the frogs. Photograph: Rajkumar K P\/Zoological Society of London<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big beautiful fallen log that was there was completely broken and misplaced,\u201d Rajkumar said. The vegetation was also trampled, and the frogs, whose homes had been destroyed, were nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n
At first he suspected brown mongooses of causing the damage, but they are not strong enough to overturn a log. Then he asked his tracker if he had seen anyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe mentioned there were a couple of photographers visiting that location. Several small groups. So later I contacted my other trackers, and they started telling me everything that had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
These nature photographers had been turning over logs in their search for the endangered species, according to the trackers. When they found them, they would capture and prop up the frogs for photos. But they didn\u2019t wear gloves, even though these delicate creatures breathe through their skin and are incredibly sensitive.<\/p>\n
One tracker told Rajkumar that two small galaxy frogs had died after being handled for too long by photographers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said they would take the animal to some nice background or mossy log to take the photograph, relocating it from one place to another to get better photos. On that day they got five or six frogs and two of them died.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spots on the frogs\u2019 skin are thought to be a mode of communication. Photograph: Rajkumar K P\/Zoological Society of London<\/p>\n
Searching again and again at the site in the following months, Rajkumar could not find any more galaxy frogs. He felt \u201chelpless\u201d in the face of the injustice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe forest department officers try to prevent these kinds of groups coming. But they use higher officials \u2013 politicians, high court judges, or something like that \u2013 to allow them to take photographs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell in love with these frogs after seeing them. You feel like they\u2019re jet black in colour, but when you put them under light you can find all the stars \u2013 like galaxies on their bodies. It\u2019s just magical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Benjamin Tapley, ZSL\u2019s curator of reptiles and amphibians, said the galaxy frogs are likely an \u201cancient\u201d, \u201cirreplaceable\u201d branch on the tree of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grimace every time I see a photo come up on my feed of a galaxy frog,\u201d said Tapley. \u201cI just wonder what happened? How was that taken? How was the habitat impacted?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really hopeful that we can encourage people to act more ethically so that incredible species like the galaxy frog can continue to thrive for millions more years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of endangered \u201cgalaxy frogs\u201d are missing, presumed dead, after trespassing photographers reportedly destroyed their microhabitats for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-189000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}