Toughie, The Last Of Its Kind, Dies In Atlanta Botanical Garden

The Atlanta Botanical Garden has announced that Toughie, the last documented member of the Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog species, has died. He was estimated to be 12 years old.

According to Zoo Atlanta, researchers moved a number of frogs and tadpoles from Panama in order to protect them from an invasive fungus in 2005. Toughie’s species, which had only been recently discovered at the time, has not been seen in the wild since 2007. The only other Rabbs’ treefrog, which was housed in Zoo Atlanta, died in 2012 of natural causes.

Toughie soon found a home at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, where he lived in their biosecure FrogPOD. According to the Huffington Post, Toughie was named by the Garden’s Amphibian Conservation Coordinator Mark Mandica’s son because, as he told the Huffington Post, “he’s the only one that made it.”