Ben Tapley, curator of reptiles and amphibians at ZSL, which runs the central London zoo, said: “They may be tiny enough to sit on your fingertip, but their arrival represents a huge step forward for an amphibian facing an uncertain future.”<\/p>\n
ZSL said no other zoo or institution was known to keep the species.<\/p>\n
It was only described by scientists in 2018. Fully grown, the frogs weigh less than 1.75g.<\/p>\n
ZSL said almost nothing was known about them when they arrived, and keepers have since developed breeding techniques that are being shared with the CSIR-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana’s breeding centre in Kumasi.<\/p>\n
The aim is to build up a population in Ghana that could be released into the wild.<\/p>\n
Ghanaian conservationist Caleb Ofori-Boateng, who helped identify the species, named it after his mother, Afia Birago.<\/p>\n
“I named this frog after my mother so that her legacy would live on,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Thanks to this breeding programme, it will. Her name will be linked to a species we saved, not one we lost.”<\/p>\n
The births follow the zoo’s success last November in breeding the Atewa slippery frog<\/a>, another critically endangered species from the same forest, which had also never been bred in captivity before.<\/p>\n Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds<\/a> and follow BBC London on Facebook, external<\/a>, X, external<\/a> and Instagram, external<\/a>. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk, external<\/a><\/p>\n